A Theory of Everything

Mary Crockett Hill

• Publisher: Autumn House Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781932870275
• eBook ISBN: 9781637680421
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2008 Autumn House Poetry Contest, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Crockett considers the intimacies of daily life and what it means to be interconnected.

in spite of everything

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

Anne Frank
Diary
July 15, 1944

■ I Ching

Above the lake is fire.

Above heaven, also fire.

Above the fire, flame.

Two sisters who have walked side by side their whole lives

diverge.

On account of fire, I cannot wake my baby to my breast.

For fire, I feel a question stirring.

Under fire, I am the body of the second sister, heading west.

Is desire born out of lack, or has it always been there,

having nothing to do with need?

A radical change is at hand. Fire.

A contradiction seizes your throat.

On the island of people who hate you, you will find a friend.

Blessings enter through the eye.

Go to that island. Stretch your hands

up to the womb-side of the earth.

The place you didn’t expect to still be there.

■ Young People Today

Apparently they’re having sex and eating

non-stop Taco Bell and wearing strange

perfumes and t-shirts that proclaim,

“Hey you! Wanna have my baby?”

And I’ve considered it and yes I do.

I want that blind white tug

of baby mouth, the pull of milk

as ostentatious as the high note

that a diva won’t stop singing.

Looking back, I want more

of sun and field and blanket,

the groundhog who is always

twenty feet away, gnawing

yard greens and pretending

he doesn’t see me

so he won’t have to run.

In the sense that all pleasures

are at root a threat, I want

a ship that sails into oblivion,

its curtains warbling tra-la, tra-lee

and the mercy of horizons

beyond reach. I should stop

to ask what you want.

What is it? Surely

not my baby after all.

I might guess something

between possession and longing

—a folded sheet of paper

made gauzy by the lamplight,

but that would just be

guessing. Instead, let’s do this:

hold the quiet of my hand

as we sit and watch the weather

tumble into evening. Perhaps

you’ll take out your spent chewing gum

and loll it between your fingers.

Perhaps the sky will open

clamorous petals above us

and what I don’t want to look at

will blur in its descent.

■ For Stinky in the Rockies

I read of your problem in the paper, dear Stinky,

and of the many who want you to know

you are not alone. We all stink sometimes. It is only

the film on your scalp and toes, possibly your rear,

writes one reader from Minnesota: You must scour

these places daily with a rough rag, spumy with soap.

Not so, says Chicago. It’s too simple: Just a pill of zinc

and your troubles will melt like buttermint on the tongue.

Oddly, John R. Myers, M.D., of Siler City, North Carolina,

insists that your smell is musky, not, as you call it, musty

and it comes from oil-producing glands in your skin.

He writes—how like a doctor—There is nothing you can do.

And California—how like a Californian—contends your odor

stems from the kind of systemic physiological imbalance

that Western medicine rarely addresses.

From New York: The culprit is dampness. Men need

to throw away their sweat-soaked belts and start fresh more often.

From Down South: Do you have an old smelly dog that sleeps on

your couch?

Wisconsin has been listening to talk radio. South Texas

is an expert deer hunter. They have notions of their own

regarding stink:

alcohol, corn starch, acupuncture, selenium sulfide shampoo,

more protein, less fat, a vegan diet, running

the hot water tap before you launder your clothes.

There are so many keys to that single scent-free garden door

where ladies twirl white parasols as they stroll,

albino peacocks pecking at their feet.

Yet, how could I want you to live there, Stinky, dear friend,

for there is something so comforting in stink.

My mother’s garlic/onion regimen, plus the closed-up house, plus

the old lap-dog, give her, yes, a musty stink

but put a beribboned toddler on her knee—and voilà!

she just smells like Grandma Boots

who will live to be one hundred and can read tea leaves.

Now, take that self-same toddler, howling

as she pukes a Jackson Pollock in her crib,

and tell her Papa (who picks her up, wipes the putrid

mess from her hair, then carries her

to his own bed to sleep out the morning) that she stinks.

He knows, but what would he do

without it?

What, without the funk of cottage cheese

in a teacup on the bedst...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• a theory of everything
• everything before us
• too much everything
• everything, lost
• in spite of everything
• the end of everything
• Notes