ODE
None of this concerns
you but
sometimes it’s better
to pretend closeness
than live in fear of
rejection. Things I know:
car sickness, the Mall
of America, all-night
murder dreams.
Childhood was a joke.
Slinging imaginary
rifles over my shoulder,
falling out of trees
for negative attention.
Now I talk to you like I
have nothing
to lose, no grip
whatsoever. I sneak into
the neighbor’s basement
just to be the criminal.
I call you in the
middle of the night to say
I’m not a ghost yet. It’s
funny because
in Chicago I have a
real brother but what
a boring story. Things I
don’t know:
portion control, easing
depression,
the optimal gesture.
Nothing I say will make
you love me
and there’s real honor
in that.
The
author of two poetry chapbooks, Massachusetts poet Anne Cecelia Holmes’ first
trade collection is The Jitters (Grand
Rapids MI: Horse Less Press, 2015). Built as a collection of compact lyrics, the
poems in The Jitters are fearless, vulnerable
and razor-sharp. These poems revel in even the smallest miracles, attempt to
comprehend the darkness, and take no shit from anyone. As she writes to open
the poem “WORLD’S TINEST EARTHQUAKE,” “I’d like to say what’s been said / and
say it better. Break // accountability exactly open. / When faced with an
ultimatum // I choose the most destructive force, / haul everyone onto the lawn
just // to get tough. Please trust me.” These are poems born of a quick, dry
wit, composed as a series of observations, critiques and direct statements that
take no prisoners. “When nothing changes I finally love myself,” she writes, in
the poem “MEMORY BRICKS.”
SOME
RELICS
All of this hurts the
facial expression.
I’m sick of watching
you fall over
the television like you’re
the one
inside it, and more
than ever
I feel like a tugboat
in that scene.
Don’t blame me for your
bad cartography. I can’t
be
an acrobat because
my heart isn’t ripe.
You said this
trampoline
makes you dream of
chairs
but to me the backyard
is a butcher shop.
Bring me a bag of rocks
and I’ll carpet you in
them.
I’m going to be
an admiral in all this.
I’ve
been increasingly aware over the past few years of a particular strain of
American poetry: poets, predominantly female poets, composing very striking
lyric poems that combine savage wit, subversion, distraction and use of the straight
phrase, blending lightness against dark subject matter. If I were to attempt
any kind of list of examples, it would include Matthea Harvey, Natalie Lyalin, Dorothea Lasky, Amy Lawless, Sommer Browning, Emily Pettit, Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Emily Kendal Frey, Anne Boyer and the late Hillary Gravendyk, and now, Anne Cecilia Holmes. What connects the writers on this list
is the way they each compose tight lyric bursts that slightly unsettle,
managing to utilize both light and dark humour, and push to shake at the core
of expectation, discomfort and the otherwise-unspoken. There is something about
how each of these authors, including Holmes, have embraced elements of the confessional
mode through a compact lyric that can be used to voice flashes of anger,
annoyance, frustrations, loneliness and violence, and even conversations on
evil, as Holmes writes in the final poem in the collection:
POEM
FOR WHAT I’M NOT ALLOWED
Ode to the murderer I imagine
in every band of trees.
To
my blood cells, to
well-ordered systems,
to my head absolutely
thick
with disease. Ode to
the dress I slept in
and wore the next day,
to the cilantro
I planted in all the
wrong weather.
Ode to the fucking
cosmos. Ode to my face
against your face, to
poems that want to
like us but don’t. Ode
to being
the bloodless one, the
neurotic one,
the one ignoring your
spiritual journey.
To your clothes in my
basement
covered in ink. To I wore this when
we
first met,
to I want to hurt you like this
and
then like this. Ode to quitting my job
to stay excited, to
exposing myself
to my neighbors, to
embedding so many
rocks in my chest. Ode
to Tulsa.
Ode to the 900-foot
Jesus, to keeping
my hands in my pockets
most of the time.
To my brothers and
sisters, to all my
enemies, to imagining
every way
to die in every
possible scenario.
Ode to crying when I can’t
find my shoes,
to feeling like god
will punish me for
sins I don’t believe
in. Ode to taking
pictures in front of
strangers’ houses.
Ode to my jacket
covered in yellow.
Ode to how I wish you
were built
out of wood panels. Ode
to staring
out the window in the
worst
of the house. Ode to
your age,
to my age, to how I react
improperly
when reenacting your
fate. Ode to
so few phenomenons. Ode
to
absolving myself of
everything.
To singing what I’m
doing, to arguing
what counts as “artifact”
and “alive.”
Ode to my wandering
pacemaker.
Ode to my big fat
heart. Ode to
pretending I’ve never
been where
I used to live. Ode to
hoping you’re
a goner. Ode to
grieving nothing
each time a villain is
born.
