Underdog

Poems

Katrina Roberts

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780295805863
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Poesie

In Underdog, poet Katrina Roberts draws on wide-ranging historical and cultural sources to consider questions of identity, to ask us to meditate on how each of us is "other" - native, immigrant, sojourner, alien - and to examine our at-once shared and foreign frontiers and margins. Throughout the book, the writer's "home" becomes a palimpsest of characters erased and resurrected. In boldly inventive poems, she addresses the lives of Chinese immigrants, the appeal of African Dogon tribal lore, the heroics and defeats of artists, canine astronauts, and Mexican farm laborers, to name just a few. Dramatic and lyrical, many poems become repositories for spells, memories, and tales. Here landscapes are faces to be studied and memorized; forgotten and overlooked legends and objects (whether quotidian, pop-cultural, ancient, or obscure), as well as characters from this planet and beyond, are retrieved and acknowledged. Other poems are concise prismatic shards, refracting and seeking specific meaning and even beauty in a world that is often both unpredictable and inscrutable. All are stitched together with unflinching compassion and a keen desire to bear witness, to comprehend something of the self's relevance in a global context. The poems, often meticulously researched, are elaborate matrices of associations, translations, re-imaginings. Age-old mind-body questions emerge: how did we get here, these poems ask urgently, and in what ways will we carry on? What does it mean "to be" and "to belong" in times of crisis? They wonder at how individuals through the ages have handled, often with grace, tremendous injustice, and they seek to comprehend the mysteries of our perpetual migrations away from and toward each other. Their Flight is Practically Silent He says one thing meaning its opposite. Before water starts to run, an ache in the jaw leaves me speechless. A packet of photos: each face has been cut out. This one: me, a child holding a wafer of sky - a robin's egg. They used to say you have her eyes. Another: wrists slashed by light, lifted to offer the world a melon, caught up hair in a twist off the shoulders, the neck, my neck - impossible and elegant - a swan's. Such grace shocks me. Who is this? That night before the baby died: barn owls calling across the creek. Did he say: Hear them? Never to be born at all; some people would say not even a baby, not "viable." A small sound - sizzle of bacon curling on a flat black pan, unseen. His arms re-crossed. And this vessel made of ash, this monument rising from dust? I didn't want any of it and I said so.

III

Cartography

The best memory is not so firm as faded ink.

—CHINESE PROVERB

The body was one thing we always had

in common, even when between us

a continent unfolded. Eric says,

We scattered his ashes beneath the Japanese maple

here behind the house. No ceremony,

as you wished, but this . . .

What you wanted from me was complex

and simple, both. Once, you asked for more

than I had to give. I live

with this; call it regret. Your hands bloom

in the intaglioed scrawl, creased onion skin tattooed

with garnet stamps from Pietrasanta,

a sifting of marble dust . . . Images: chiseled

jut of jaw, cheek, bridge of nose—recall

each granite face rising from New Hampshire

dirt upon which faltering, you last stepped.

In 1729, long before either of us came

to be, Reiner Ottens dragged his fine tip

across a smooth sheet: Globi Coelestis

in Tabulas Planas Redacti Pars III. Bright beings—

lobster, serpent, bison, dove bearing the requisite

sprig—swirl and writhe over lines that pin

distance and story to time.

Spectral creatures that we are, connecting dots

to chart our ways. . . . If only I could wrap

the whole plane back into its ball.

Without your body in it,

this world’s gone

flat.

(Jack Marshall, 1932–2009)

Mine

—Pendleton, Oregon, 1919

Somewhere, a mother’s arms encircled me if only

for months awaiting my birth, then brief minutes of skin

before others swept me away. Love

with no contingencies? Feathered wisps

rising from a kettle’s addled mouth foretold the mist

of her voice winging forever into my cocked ear, foresaw

deep water flowing close under my soles, here in a dank cell

beneath streets carved into a continent’s pelt

an ocean away where I lay my pipe-woozy head

on a block of wood or this porcelain pillow

my sister sent with me—see, it’s hollow to hide

what’s precious—each night, harboring

hope who-knows-how the earth’s crust might crack

open to reveal a river of gold to dip hands

into, enough to overflow pockets and let me catch

the next boat home.

Eighty bodies bloom and reek beside me

in pitchy heat under alleyways I cannot walk once night

falls, but how alone I am. Though strong; 85 lbs.

and I carried hundred-pound blocks from a quarry five

miles off to sculpt this underworld: caves

of Elgin basalt, tunnels, rooms where I hang

my cotton jacket (scraps of sky) from a peg, balance

a round pot over small flames, tip a bottle back, toss

the dice, ring a gong. What is life if not tentative? A cat

on haunches, I crouch—sucking between clenched

teeth to exhale. Prisms set overhead wash me

at noon in roses, iris—tricks of manganese in glass, our

best source of light, dwindling as hours pass. Then ore-cold

shutters swing to cover chasms into vents, giving us

some sense even if false, one might lock out harm.

But what eats within is worse—how like rats, longing

gnaws so my heart cramps each time I dream

of women: mother, sister, cousins, the bride I hoped to win.

And questions: my worth, children I’ll never hold, intimations

of each life not to be mine. . . . For you I left

the Celestial Kingdom, I whisper into the pitch, kneading

my hands for warmth and to you I shall return.

Alessio’s Hand

Comes to me in the dream of Odin’s eye

resting in smooth silt at the bottom of the Well of Wisdom.

She was one of three sisters, her head thrown

back in laughter. It was hard to look for very long.

Are there still coyotes roaming those fields? A name floats

in—white eyelet, a dress. An armful of daisies,

or the man slight as someone’s daughter. And then, the word

soil itself . . . Or the first person to make fabric unfurl

from needles in knots. Just when you think there’s calm

again she throws a stick through the bike’s wheel.

I was never good enough. Dust devils, that’s what

they’re called, right? On the side of his barn: blood

red, yellow of cheddar, a blazing green like winter rye—

his Hex sign, painted Chust for nice. Polish on the nails

makes her hands sweat. And again, Alessio’s missing

fingers. Awake, I fin...