The Latest Winter

Maggie Nelson

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786994714
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Les femmes dans la poésie

'Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation'
Olivia Laing In this, her second anthology of poetry, Maggie Nelson experiments with poetic forms long and short as she charts intimate landscapes, including the poet's enmeshment in a beloved city-New York-before and after the events of 9/11. The poems of The Latest Winter are rich with wit, melancholy, terror, curiosity, and love.

III.

The Latest Winter

My friends play beautiful music and call it

A Cabin in the Woods. It’s so sad

I don’t even want to go there

a reviewer wrote. I live

here. Some people play the flute

The flute makes me mute, its round

holes, sound of morning that’s

coming. It’s dark in here tonight, just

the scalloped string of Christmas

lights and a blue slit under

the front door. Yesterday while doing

the dishes I looked closely at a fork

and saw all the crud that collects

between the tines, dried egg yolk

from days before, dark yellow and hard

What you don’t know

You put it in your mouth

It’s quite shocking, really, like when

I first saw that my face was made

of yellow light and dough

Big wet flakes of snow

float into the windshield

A whole host of ghosts

I have abandoned beautiful

people. To think of it is like

coming upon an air pocket—

the plane shakes and I start to panic

but then it stops and I fall asleep.

I’ve wasted twenty-eight years

not feeling magic, that’s what

she told me, her wrists heavy

with new bracelets. It’s true,

there’s not much about the way

I’m living that makes me feel red

or sweaty. And if you keep watching

the flakes instead of the road

you may crash the car

but they are so very pretty!

And the snowstorm at large

can be dangerous and ugly.

Then there’s the dream

in which you come back to me

bright-eyed and drug-free

but you love someone else

I wake with a jagged feeling

from my chin to my heart

which is only interrupted

by a call from my mother

who wants to talk about

my taxes. Is life just a series

of good dinners? she asks.

I want to ski off into the white

white moguls against the white mountain

Take the jump can’t get

my powdersuit down

to pee in the woods but I want

to show him I can do it too

Go on the gondola with Jack

he’s got cognac in a flask

Can’t feel my toes look for the T-bar

hold on up the steep slope

spit on the black figures below

and sing You Light Up My Life

with Emily, top of our lungs

Later at night all the adults

play Charades, I watch them

from the kids’ room upstairs

My dad pretends to be Dolly Parton

by cupping his hands to his chest

They laugh in the gold light

They are all married

Outside lies the dark hill

where he dug a trail for us

to sled and the hollow moon

The candle I got for my birthday

smells like lilac and a warm baby

somewhere wants attention

What’s not to like about that?

he asks. I am licking the air

open-mouthed just as you do

when you play your instrument

Yes the dissonance is truth,

whether it is killing me or not

is not relevant, as I am trying

to write without knowing

who I am. A basket of mushrooms

A quiet child drawing a tree

Drops of jade on a string

No one really knows, certainly not

the writers of the manifestos

Ask the houseplants struggling

to live through the latest winter

Or the sliver of space between

the stove and fridge

At 9am the neighborhood

gets angry, people honk

At 3pm the kids get out

of school and scream

The cops treat them

like criminals. At 11pm

I lo...