A Raft of Grief

Chelsea Rathburn

• Publisher: Autumn House Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781932870794
• eBook ISBN: 9781637680209
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Poetry Contest, selected by Stephen Dunn, Chelsea Rathburn's second collection continues to amaze with her ability to direct a clear poet's gaze on every aspect of life. Working in both free-verse and form, this book solidfies Rathburn as an essential voice for contemporary poetry.

III

arrivals

The Crucible

for my newly ex-husband

Everywhere I look, some metaphor

for disaster or driving love

away—see, here’s one rising now

unasked from tenth grade chemistry,

a class I’d just as soon forget,

when we stood by a lab table

weighing copper sulfate for burning.

We were there to measure change

in a small white dish the teacher insisted

we call a crucible. We hated

that teacher—grim, slope-shouldered, Baptist.

My lab partner, Craig, so pleased

he’d caught our first mistake early—

we forgot to weigh the empty dish!—

pressed down too hard, turning the scale

into a catapult. As we watched,

the crucible hung in space, then tumbled,

end over end over end,

bouncing twice before breaking.

I could say it was like that, darling,

that we shattered just like that.

The way the thing seemed painted on the air,

the dissolution certain, infinite.

If in the end we paid twelve dollars

and pocketed shards of porcelain,

and life went on, as it’s prone to do,

would it be some consolation?

And why am I trying to console?

Counterparts

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Away from the Mesozoic’s crowds,

we study woodpeckers and terns

in the Hall of Birds. The air seems stiller

here, the lights dimmer—or is that

a trick of silence? Beside two startled

ivory-bills, a replica

of a dodo, rare in itself.

Then something stranger: an exhibit

on cartoons and their counterparts.

In a dusty case, a plush Tweety

looms above a real stuffed

canary, yellow belly-up

as if tossed out in Granny’s trash.

A small brown owl, looking neither

wise nor proud, just dead, slumps over

an empty bag of potato chips.

These compositions—carelessness

or some curator’s commentary?

Beside an ancient cereal box,

a limp toucan is tagged and taped,

all beak and feet, an arrangement

so awkward we laugh. Across

the aisle, in a manicured look

at tropical life, another toucan

seems ready to burst from its branch

into song. It’s less convincing,

though, than that broken one black

and desolate on the shelf.

Small Deaths

The possum that has died under the azaleas,

thin tail pointing toward us, face turned away,

was a baby, not so ugly yet, though death

is making it so. Each day we debate: move

the body or leave it to the wasps. Each day

our dog leads me as close as I’ll let her go

and stands yearning. Beside her, I try and

try not to look. I don’t know what it’s died of.

The open spine looks like a white phone cord,

something electrical. The insects hum,

and I feel the old wooziness coming on,

that thing that fells me at the doctor’s office

or giving blood, so many apologies

to so many nurses—what brought it on?

As a child, I studied my open cuts

and stared down roadkill, half in love with the frog’s

flattened face. When I was nine, a squirrel

raided a nest and dropped the stolen egg

into our pool, and my father fished it out,

the broken bird close enough to hatching

that we could call it a bird. He produced

formaldehyde and an empty olive jar

like magic, returning the embryo

to something like an amniotic bath.

It floated and turned, its few feathers fluttering,

its skin nearly transparent, the organs

purple and countable. It sat unchanging

on my sill for years, the giant eyes dark,

the vulnerable beak. I have to look away

from needles now, yet I keep returning

to the possum deconstructed in the grass,

the red emptiness where there was fur.

We’ve given up all talk of burial.

Listen—the wasps out in the yard, those small

and angry carnivores, are quiet now.

Admission

I too have come louder than absolutely necessary

for the sake of some imagined listener

or the snotty girls in the next apartment.

And so, sitting in the hallway of a low-rent

Manhattan hotel, listening to the un-muffled pleasure

of strangers mix with violence, I occupy myself

with wondering what is authentic and what

behind that too-thin door is show, an exercise

slightly preferable to imagining the scene

in the room I sit outside of, where my boyfriend waits

f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• I. Departures
• II. In Transit
• III. Arrivals
• Acknowledgments