The Drowned Girl

Eve Alexandra

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780873387866
• eBook ISBN:
  9781612773841
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Rare in any age is work which incorporates a passion for experience, a commitment to truth, an ability to plumb the irrational, and a fluency in poetic language and music which can work through all these tangled thickets, but Eve Alexandra does just that. . . . This is true poetry; it immediately takes its place as a participant in the vast historical voice which composes poetry, a voice which contains ten-thousand tones, but which takes nothing unto itself which doesn't resonate, as do the poems of The Drowned Girl, with authenticity and fervor."—C. K. Williams, Judge

"One of the things I find compelling about Eve Alexandra's poems is that, while the narrator is seductive and beautiful, she is not pleasing. She does not offer comfort. She is not kind or solicitous. Like Ariel, who 'performs the tempest' for Prospero, Alexandra, too, is a tempest-ress: these are the storms and drownings of her own invention. Like Ariel's bedeviling and gorgeous tunes composed to tease the sorrowful, these are poems of the taunt and tease, the razor in the apple."—Lynn Emanuel

"Something bright and reflective, something lucid and exacting glints at the center of this fleshy, original debut. Is it a needle? Is it a scalpel? Is it a scythe? Is it the switchblade a woman might carry in her purse? Eve Alexandra wields a tender, sharp honesty. The lines cut and dice, arc and glimmer in the light of her lyricism and intelligence. These poems will open you, make you bleed, make you wonder."—Terrance Hayes

III

beginning

and beginning and beginning

with love [sic]. The green

froth of tulle, the titian tiara

of braids, cocktail

of scratch and sparkle.

and beginning and beginning

somewhere between swing

and sin, stop and go.

go, go, go away

all of you in the aisle seats,

hats and gloves,

mamas and papas, sisters

impressionable as clay. Even you

God. This red is our lonely highway,

our bone to pick, our little rib

growing pink in the hay.

Composition

You are not reading. Text unwritten. The text is inside. This is an outside text. These are the footnotes. These are my feet. Bare and walking toward him. And these are hers. Walking away. These are endnotes. As in night. Late December. Or death. The end, which is also a beginning. Conception. A haunting. A first kiss. A goodbye kiss. An epilogue. Epigraph. Prologue. Log it down. As in keep track. Minutes. Days. Weeks. Months. Daily. Entry. Enter into. Danger. Exit. No—a refusal to exit. To say: I did it. I chose this. I did it willingly. You’ve made your bed and now you’ve got to lie in it. How do you spell bed? What color is it? What did the sheets smell like? Before? And after? I put his hand on my thigh. I understood. Everything. Write everything down. Keep track. As in diary. Secret. As in many. Beginning and never stopping. As in speed. Flight. She is. Walking away. She is swift. She is strong. The human body. Amazing. Motion. This is motion. Words are wheels. Turning. Out of control. This is my mouth. Saying: Stop. I love you. This is a place. I have left him. I will never return. These words are hollow. Text is. One-dimensional. How can I. Explain. She is a place. She is safety. X marks the spot. He is a destination to which I am traveling. These are my feet. Barefoot. Endnotes. Blood in the snow. Pick up your feet. Ready. Set. Go. The gun goes off. There are no false starts. Run eight laps around the track. Run through the field. Run home. Many miles. We have traveled. Together. Six years. I owe her this much. Pack. Pack it up. Logistics. The logic of boxes. Of boxes marked kitchen and picture frames. And Christmas. Ethos. Ethology. Etiology. Epidemic. Epilogue. Log it down. Logic. Love. Love always. P.S. You dwell. Only in my body. The body of this text. Which is nothing. And everything, my love. My love for her. And this is me. My feet walking toward. These are my hips. This is the will to be carried. This is the stone. Strike the match. This is blue light. The will to destroy. These are my own cells. Dividing. As in divisible. As in division. These are my fists. Against my head. These are her hands. This is how they open. Inside me. This is treason. This. Simple act of pen to paper. The type face. The little zoo. Of characters. The decadence of fonts. Of erasing. Or saving and making it so. This is the file marked ( ). This is the slow dirge of consonants. The betrayal of vowels. The ineptitude. The clumsiness. The infertility of language. While the body is motion. A butterfly. A backstroke. A game of Russian Roulette. The barrel spins something beautiful. It clicks like his heart. Beats inside my own chest. Her hands on my breasts. Inside me. Her fists inside me. Never open. Never striking my face. This is the safety. Of textual violence. I can lie. Say: metaphor. What if I told you: this is fiction. A make-believe alphabet: breasts, lips, shoulders, clit, cock, thighs, wrists.… Merely tools for building. They are images. Substitutions. I am a substitute for she. There is no he. No translation. No room for him. Inside me. Inside us. Two. The two shes. Plural. Past perfect. On my knees. As in I’ve dropped to my knees. I’m unzipping his pants. I want him in my mouth. I want to speak. Fluently. As in fluency. His hands on my hips swimming. Toward the mouth of my thighs. Swimming is the body. In perfect motion. As in perfection. As in predilection. She was afraid of the water. I told her trust. I dreamt he came to me. We weren’t alone. The pool was full of children. Taking lessons. Take me from behind. Under water. The chlorine burns my eyes. Cleanses the scent of him. From my body. From the water inside. She lets go. She is no longer afraid of the water. She has a body made for motion. She is good at sports. Lifts me above her. Love. See notes below: This is a love beyond language. This is the failure. Of my mouth. Of pen and paper. I try to tell her: too perfect for poems. How could I begin. To write of our bodies. I live inside her. How her blood swims in me. How pleasure becomes love. So I beg her. I need force. To feel her. Otherness. To feel her outside. Inside me. This is the blank page. The white space. There is no body. No text. She is written inside me. He is other. As in catalogued. Classified. As in maps made. I can tell you about him. I can spell his name. Measure the span of his chest. To tell you of the tip of his cock. Bruised by the red of my lips. To tell you this color mixes with the purple swell. Of his skin. To tell you he tastes of metal and salt. To say: I love him or do not. Technology makes it easy to erase. Or to save everything. Safe. Safety. She is my X. My X marks the spot. Russian Roulette: the barrel spins something beautiful. Clicks. He must leave the page. Flee my body. This is division. As in divided. This text. Is the unwritten. The forgotten. The unable to forget. These are my footsteps. Each vowel, each consonant crawling toward him. Desire. As in haunt. My metaphor. My mouth. My poetry. She is my own body swimming. She is also the sea. As in see her. As in read. Read between the lines. Of my mouth. Of pen and paper. The first kiss. Kiss me good-bye. This is the file marked ( ). You are not reading. Text unwritten. The text is inside.

Sex, Semiotics, Roadsigns, etc.

Attention: there is a curve in the road. A speed bump. She is changing directions. Or taking off her clothes. Chameleon. Speaking. Slipping. There is slippage. And roads are slippery when wet. And so are tour guides and this girl is very. So wet she is wearing a slicker. Like the one she wore the first day of first grade. Bright yellow. So wet she is fluid. Fluidity and fluency all mixed up. Mix you a drink, darling? She’ll call you. Try to trick you with that purr, that catcall she calls a voice. Siren. And not the red ones. Not the rescuing kind. No, no. That is paint on her lips. Cheap paint. Nothing electric. She says green, go. When you should stop. She’ll point you in all the wrong ways. Spread her legs like a map? You’ll get nothing but confusion. End up in Topeka or someplace worse....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• I
• II
• III