Solve for Desire

Poems

Caitlin Bailey

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781571314994
• eBook ISBN: 9781571319753
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A debut poetry collection exploring the real lives of siblings Georg and Grete Trakl while addressing themes of desire, addiction, loss, and absence.
Georg Trakl is one of the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century. Less is known about his sister, Grete: also gifted, also addicted to drugs, and dead by her own hand three years after Georg's overdose. But in Solve for Desire—selected by Srikanth Reddy as the winner of the 2017 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—Caitlin Bailey summons Grete from the shadows. At once sensual and acidic, obsessive and bereft, the Grete of these poems is a fairy-tale sister leaving "missives dropped around the city, crumbs / for your ghost."
Can one person be addicted to another? Can two souls be twinned, and where does that leave the physical? How do we solve for desire when the object we adore disappears—and how does the poet solve and resolve the past, its wounds and its absences? "Each time I write your name," Bailey writes, "a key / turns somewhere in a lock." Like the "perfect red burst" of poppies and of blood, these poems are a blooming, keening exploration of desire between brother and sister, poet and subject, the living and the dead.
Praise for Solve for Desire
"The work of a poet who sings, boldly, across the distances between us." —Srikanth Reddy
"A sobering look at desire, addiction, loss, and absence in this debut collection of short, lyric poems that are by turns lush and understated, lofty and plainspoken. . . . She performs a kind of feminist resuscitation of the lesser-known Grete, focusing on small moments of quiet, grief, lust, and memory, and fleshing out a story that is still disputed" — Publishers Weekly
"This precarious, satisfyingly disjointed debut collection of poetry captures the spirit of the [Trakl] siblings. . . . Bailey's brilliantine lyrics shine brightest when the siblings' characters are wrought in full relief." — Booklist

I.

WHOEVER DRINKS FROM ME

Come, let us go away together into the wide world.

—THE BROTHERS GRIMM

Be not tiger nor wolf to rend me,

but brother as deer.

Brother as thirst.

Quarrel of forest, windfall of firs.

Water meant to wound

we repurpose.

Too dangerous to keep you

in the world.

Take to the woods, deer brother.

Dear brother.

Here I adorn you.

Adore you.

Here is our sorrow tree.

Here is our hollow.

Here only the sweetest grass.

O, your crown of rushes.

Finally our good hour.

Our gold all-encompassing.

I will never, never leave you.

Deer brother. Dear brother.

LOST LETTER

This is the first time I’ve written to you,

and I know now why they called me little witch.

My hands have done terrible things.

I remember the first time, your hand cupped

over the glass and over mine, O charging desire—

the welcome rush of the wild heart, poppies

blooming under my skin, a perfect red burst.

And now he’s in the other room, and I can’t

be long remembering you. You wore your anger

like a bare coat until I plucked myself from your

pocket. I knew nothing of loss.

PIGEONS

Once we walked into a field and watched pigeons

black out the sky, thousands of wings whirring,

and it was a wonder they stayed aloft.

The most brilliant part of you exists to haunt me:

a bomb in the womb or men in the rafters.

Sometimes I can’t believe my heart,

how it continues.

How it isn’t black and withered,

how the chambers remain clear,

the beat plain and perfect.

CHURCH, HIPBONE

Ready tender mass. Glossy rope, we bare our teeth.

Equal the church, the hipbone, the sliced ocean.

That old yank in the throat, bedded for days. Perpetual tangle.

Something bent, fashioned in fits, memory of your arm

filling a sleeve. A blue whale’s heart is the size of a small car

and I am finding it hard to imagine anyone who would not

be moved to think of that vehicle. I want to drive fast

into your mouth, leave nothing on the table. Ridge inside

of me, hurt spot continually worried, thumb brushed

against collarbone until it begins to crumble. Which parts

belong to me? Just the blossoming, or the tongued flat skin?

Relief when you appear. If I were fastened to any question:

hands laced together.

THIS IS THE HOUSE

Desire fogs through the halls. We build

the house with cedar strappings. The salt

disaster of our skin whirls through doorways.

The rooms are smug, spotted. We find chips

of paint in the sheets, rub our backs raw.

Grease the floor with salve, slip from room

to room. Worry the edges of our gowns

and wear them tattered. Smartly, I kiss

the soles of your feet. We bury our luck

in the firmest piece of land.

POEM ABOUT DESIRE

spun sugar and roasted chestnuts

glass and stones

something about refracted light,

my split allegiance

Prater, Riesenrad

that ring against the sky

THE HEART IS TO A PLEASANT THING

Compare the heart to any pleasant thing.

Compare an apple to a snake.

Failed experiments we are bou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part I.
• Part II.
• Part III.
• Part IV.
• Notes
• Works Consulted
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author