Disquiet

John C. Witte

• Verlag: University of Washington Press
• Jahr: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780295805771
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: American Poetry

Disquiet is a collection of poems that utilizes natural phenomena—a bright beach, a fallen tree limb, the weight of gravity—to evoke and reflect upon memory and human experience. The poems are structurally innovative, each shaped around a central axis as they trace the speaker's growth from childhood to adulthood. Acute observations resonate throughout the book as its focus shifts from the natural world to the world of the made—the grocery cart or pie-case or microscope—to the world of visual art, and then back. The poems are subtly braided together in a way reminiscent of the invisible bonds that unite snowflakes or cells.

I. ilk

KINGLET

A smoke-graysnippetflicking
mistfrom the madronewe had forgotten
it zippingthrough the limbshuddled inside
all winterits brisk
swaggerramping and sizzlingfreaked
flashing its tinygold crownas if to say
see howin love we arehow brief
how fitfullyburning

FLEDGLING

I awoketo singing
and clamberedout of my crib
over the dresserto the small screened window
where I perchedbirds flickeringaround their nest
the hungry hatchlingsfeatherlessawkward I leaned
toward themI cannot say whereI went flying
from the farmhousein upstate New York
I came toin a white roomthe broken face
of my motherlooking downwith wires
attached to mea human child

HIS KITE

climbing higherin his short life
there had never been anythingso brisk as this
creaturelashing its tailand so he forgot
and ran toward ittoward what he loved
and the kite wobbledas if confused
the gulls squealingin memory
the beachan emptinesspulling apart
the boy he wasplungingtoward his kite
crumpledwhat a moment agowas reading
the invisiblehallwaysand soft
walls of wind

PAPER PLANE

What a boy did
with a sheetof paper being
lazynot scrawlhis book report
or paintmuddling the colorsbut carefully
fold itlike thisinto a floating
eerily circlingalmost
weightlessthing

THE ME

who raised the trumpetto his lips
who learned breathtongue and double-tongue
in this wayescapingwho began to hear
ictuscadence
and the mewho lifted stones
turning andcoaxinghis small grunts
at duskhis blackened nailhis wall
trimand true
but most of allthe me who swam
out across the lakethe waves swaying him
who gaspedwho wrestled in the waterthe wooded
island farther offthan he thought

SHIBA ONKO

Then the youngestgazing
into a porcelain urnastir with koi
fell inand was trappedhis friends cried
and tore at their clothesI’m telling this story
for youLeo
swimming aloneat night
in the reservoirone of the boys returned
with a stoneand hurled itwith all his strength
shattering the urnthe water brokeover him
and the dying boywho cannot be
told apartfrom the hero
lay gaspingsaved

SARGE

Because we movedinto town
and there wasn’t roomfor such a big dog
because the boywould notunderstand because
so muchneeded to changebecause you led him
across the highwaybecause you yourself
were forsakenas a child you
stroked him and saidstay here someone
will find youand take care of youbecause
you looked backand he followedyou tumbling
under the wheelsbecause you liedsaying
he ran awaybecauseif he knew the boy
would never bethe same

PHANTOM

Raptfingers sticky
he connectedthe fragile plastic
halves of the fuselagesqueezing on cement
att...