The Spectral Wilderness

Oliver Bendorf

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781631010880
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2013 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize

Mark Doty, Judge

"It's a joy...to come nearer to a realm of experience little explored in American poetry, the lives of those who are engaged in the complex project of transforming their own gender… Oliver Bendorf writes from a paradoxical, new-world position: the adult voice of a man who has just appeared in the world. A man emergent, a man in love, alive in the fluid instability of any category."

—Mark Doty, from the Foreword

"Bendorf's collection indeed opens the door to a spectral wilderness, an otherworldly pastoral, a queer ecology endlessly transformed by possibility, grief, and the unruly wanting of our names and bodies. Stunningly lyrical and beautifully theoretical, The Spectral Wildernessis an invitation one cannot turn down; the book calls us to travel with Bendorf, to study the topography of becoming because "what we used to be matters" in the way that language matters—however fleeting, however mistaken, however contradictory it might be."

—Stacey Waite, author of Butch Geography

"What gorgeous and ravenous rackets Oliver Bendorf's poems are made of; what a yearning and beautiful heart. 'Lift a geode from the ground and crack me open, ' he writes, which is more or less what these poems do for me: break me open to what might sparkle and blaze, what might glisten and burn inside. The Spectral Wildernessis a wonderful book."

—Ross Gay, author of Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down

I.

I PROMISED HER MY HANDS WOULDN’T
GET ANY LARGER

But she’s decided we need to trace them in case I

turn out to be wrong. Every morning she wakes me

with a sheet of paper. In the beginning, she stowed

all the tracings in a folder, until one day I said I’d like

to at least see where this is going, and from that point on

we hung them on the wall chronologically. When I

study them, they look back at me like busted

headlights. I wear my lab coat around the house to

make sure they know who’s observing whom. If we

can ensure records, if we can be diligent in our

testing. I wrap my fingers around her wrist. Nothing

feels smaller yet. Not her, not the kettle nor the key.

If my hands do grow, they should also be the kind

that can start a fire with just a deer in the road.

SPLIT IT OPEN JUST TO COUNT THE PIECES

One might consider that identification is always an ambivalent process.

—Judith Butler

Call me tumblefish, rip-roar, pocket of light,

haberdash and milkman, velveteen and silverbreath,

your bitch, your little brother, Ponderosa pine,

almanac and crabshack and dandelion weed. Call me

babyface, kidege—little bird or little plane—thorn of rose

and loaded gun, a pile of walnut shells. Egg whites

and sandpaper, crown of Gabriel, hand-rolled sea,

call me cobblestone and half-pint, your Spanish

red-brick empire. Call me panic and Orion, Pinocchio

and buttercream. Saltlick, shooting star, August peach

and hurricane. Call me giddyup and Tarzan, riot boy

and monk, flavor-trip and soldier and departure.

Call me Eiffel Tower, arrondissement, le garçon,

call me the cigarette tossed near the leak

of gasoline. Call me and tell me that Paris is on fire at last,

that the queens of Harlem can have their operations

and their washing machines. Call me seamless,

call me sir. Call me tomorrow’s inevitable sunrise.

MAKE BELIEVE

Make believe generally has no rules except to stay in character.

—Wikipedia

The first time I took a razor to my face

I forgot what I was made of. Having

made believe all I could, I made believe

a little further, pulling the open blade

around the corner of my lips, watching

a few desolate strands fall to the sink

like soldiers in a porcelain trench,

or as with invisible ink drew myself

a mustache I could get behind.

Or I am made up of fanciful scraps

and small fingers, one for every time

I’ve ever been called Sir.

Tomorrow I’ll get a prescription

is what I’ve resolved every day since

the last June solstice drained the light

from the sky and passerines remembered

they had wings. In the woods I walk

figure eights around ground shrubs

that cling to the cold grass below

and remind myself: no guarantees.

It’s true, some days I want the beard

in writing, want to know that when

I needle myself every fourteen

days, all the hundred jagged things

that give me away will start to shift

and this traveling itch will disappear

for good. But it happens as a gradient

so I wait like small hands cupped. I wait

in character, hips pointing the way,

shoulders broad like a wingspan.

I wait at the outskirts of regulation

with my Stetson and Wranglers for

the oak tree and the sheep herd

and the waiter and the goat vet

and the teapot and the snowstorm

and my father and my father’s father

and the children I pass in the field

to see me as this new soft man

and for me to begin to believe it.

QUEER...