Constituents of Matter

Anna Leahy

• Verlag: The Kent State University Press
• Jahr: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781631011320
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: Poetry

Winner of the 2006 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize

"Found in these pages is simple profundity, desire unmitigated, the things we wish for each other, the science of absolutes so easy to understand, and so devastating: these poems put complex moments in such a straightforward context that we grasp not simply the words but the full feeling as something we have felt in some kind of similar vocabulary."
—Alberto Ríos, Judge

"In Constituents of Matter, Anna Leahy looks hard and long at the 'solid things' of the world and discovers that they are both reflected and refracted by time. The matter that constitutes her experience occupies a space that is 'immense' with 'emptiness' but is also 'buoyant' with 'joy.' Like the moose she looks at and who catches her looking ('Moose, Looking'), I find that I'm contained by a 'large life' that's revealed in intervals of repose and stillness."
—Michael Collier

"That which occupies space; substance; experience; subject of concern, feeling, or action; difficulty; quantity; something set down in writing; from the Latin mater, mother. What matters, ultimately, in Anna Leahy's crafted cosmology, is that family, lovers, thinkers, and saints shine like stars through each and every one of her intelligent words."
—Kathy Fagan

I. UP/DOWN

MOMENTS, CAUSES

Modern man has used cause-and-effect as ancient man used the gods to give order to the Universe. This is not because it was the truest system, but because it was the most convenient.

—HENRI POINCARÉ

Moments arrive like mothers, inevitably

seamless and charming. History

is thunder following lightning,

two moments from one cause,

the seen and then the heard.

Even the blind, when a light is shone

from a heatless, strangered distance,

know the silent light’s direction:

up or down—there, there, now.

But wait! When out of time, out of place,

one particular thing becomes another

unseemingly: the overlapping

like tops and bottoms of waves that is metaphor.

What are mothers for,

if not to teach us to swim

by showing us the motions of arms and legs

and planets, of flavors and colors, fathers and lovers,

and holding our young bellies

until we put our faces in the water

with our breaths held?

Water, then, is breathtaking,

and we float, suspended

in we know not what

until, knowing, we glide.

THEORIES OF HANDWRITING

Remember the writing tablet,

each line wide with its dashed center.

Remember the cursive alphabet

circling the classroom

above the blackboard where everyone

could see it, white letters on green,

and the word cursive itself

such decadence at seven years old.

Remember the patience,

moving pencil to top of line,

the curve, the half-heights

of lower case, repetition.

Remember how hard

the G, the D, how easy the I.

The balance, remember the balance

above and below, up and down,

the importance of length,

and the looping, so unnecessary

but lovely and full

and correct.

~

In Latin class, who am I

to tell the difference

between accent marks, to know

which are simply innate sound,

to mark other syllables with import

like stamens

dashing visibly from orchids?

I sit at a table alone in a next-door room

with a nosebleed, small clots in my throat

let loose, red-soaked tissues,

a bouquet in my hands

while the rest of class conjugates

unwildly and without

the inflection I think possible

if markings mean anything.

~

I cannot tell one nun’s handwriting

from another’s, nor from my grandmother’s.

All the same, all perfect.

I guess, though, at their years,

the now-thoughtless focus.

~

In written Mandarin, autumn is crops on fire.

The language is tenseless, numberless,

and, therefore, open to suggestion,

suggestive. In Latin, suggerere, to carry under

so that metaphor is what underlies,

a tunnel burrowed beneath one thing

to another, the meaning carried through.

Juxtaposition requires no tunnel.

And Mandarin’s sorrow

is autumn on the heart.

~

I was reprimanded for printing,

told that I was not revealing

what God had made me.

Cursive is from course, as in flowing,

as in blood coursing through your veins

like sepals and petals loosening

to bloom, taking shape.

How perceptive of someone to recognize

that handwriting is self-expression,

how bold of some nun to say this

to my face.

~

The thumb down the jaw

like a bonnet string for female

and then the hands held out

to hold the imagined baby

for mother. And male

is the fingers coming together

with the thumb as if

grasping the brim of a hat.

The father I know

is the thumb tapping temple,

fingers wiggling.

The question is merely a stroke

with the right index finger

across the left digits

or the index finger circling

in front of the lips

as if applying lipstick

on a round mouth.

And the answer,

three extended fingers

moved in an arc

across the heart,

shoulder to shoulder: we.

~

A friend confides in me

that the Chinese character for factory

is now just a roof without machinery,

that immense is full of emptiness too,

that the written language now confuses

after, behind, and queen.

In writing, nothing is unintentional,

not even confusion,

and revolution can be simplification.

~

Remember handwritten stories

with crayon drawings. Remember

doodles in the margins during class,

the flowers’ five-petal corollas

and curved petioles, pointed leaves

and the words on the page, lighter,

less planned

but wholly ordered by something

beyond hand and pen,

the words unthinking

next to the bursting, marginal ivy.

Remember a grandfather’s recipes,

a list of ingredients

without instructions

on large index cards: French toast

with thick bread left out overnight to dry,

salad dressing with lemon juice

squeezed fresh into the oil,

chicken salad with capers.

Remember his hands, holding

a fork, reading, and, after, a cigarette

drifting curlicues.

~

The handwritten gives way,

eventually relinquishes fingers to keyboard,

as if to first frost.

Still, I remember and begin with pen

and ruled paper and their ability

to strike through

and allow me to still see it

there under the dark line

of my new intentions.

Jo...