Brenda Shaughnessy

Miracles


I spent the whole day
crying and writing, until
they became the same,

as when the planet covers the sun
with all its might and still
I can see it, or when one dead

body gives its heart
to a name on a list. A match.
A light. Sailing a signal

flare behind me for another to find.
A scratch on the page
is a supernatural act, one twisting

fire out of water, blood out of stone.
We can read us. We are not alone.


*


Artless


is my heart. A stranger
berry there never was,
tartless.

Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
roofless.

No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.

All I’ve ever made
with these hands
and life, less

substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless

but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.

Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve. Nonetheless,

in the end, if you must
know, if I must bend,
waistless,

to that excruciation.
No marvel, no harvest
left me speechless,

yet I find myself
somehow with heart,
aloneless.

With heart,
fighting fire with fire,
flightless.

That loud hub of us,
meat stub of us, beating us
senseless.

Spectacular in its way,
its way of not seeing,
congealing dayless

but in everydayness.
In that hopeful haunting
(a lesser

way of saying
in darkness) there is
silencelessness

for the pressing question.
Heart, what art you?
War, star, part? Or less:

playing a part, staying apart
from the one who loves,
loveless.


*


I’m Over the Moon


I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do.
Confuse me, ovulate me,

spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient
date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon,

I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to
swoon at your questionable light,

you had me chasing you,
the world’s worst lover, over and over

hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight.
But you disappear for nights on end

with all my erotic mysteries
and my entire unconscious mind.

How long do I try to get water from a stone?
It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.

Better off alone. I’m going to write hard
and fast into you, moon, face-fucking.

Something you wouldn’t understand.
You with no swampy sexual

promise but what we glue onto you.
That’s not real. You have no begging

cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch
sucked. No lacerating spasms

sending electrical sparks through the toes.
Stars have those.

What do you have? You’re a tool, moon.
Now, noon. There’s a hero.

The obvious sun, no bullshit, the enemy
of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures.

But my lovers have never been able to read
my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct.

It’s hard to learn that, hard to do.
The sun is worth ten of you.

You don’t hold a candle
to that complexity, that solid craze.

Like an animal carcass on the road at night,
picked at by crows,

haunting walkers and drivers. Your face
regularly sliced up by the moving

frames of car windows. Your light is drawn,
quartered, your dreams are stolen.

You change shape and turn away,
letting night solve all night’s problems alone.
 

from INTERIOR WITH SUDDEN JOY (1999)
    13     Still Life, with Gloxinia
    14     Lure, Lapse
    15     Jouissance
    16     What’s Uncanny
    17     Swell
    18     Dear Gonglya,
    19     Rise
    20     Glossary
    22     Your One Good Dress
    23     Lacquer
    24     Epithalament
    25     Cinema Poisoning
    26     Postfeminism
    27     Project for a Fainting
    28     You Love, You Wonder
    29     Ever
    30     Interior with Sudden Joy

from HUMAN DARK WITH SUGAR (2008)
    35     I’m Over the Moon
    37     Why is the Color of Snow?
    39     One Love Story, Eight Takes
    43     I’m Perfect at Feelings
    45     Drift
    46     Me in Paradise
    48     Embarrassment
    52     A Poet’s Poem
    53     First Date and Still Very Very Lonely
    55     Dancing in my Room Alone
    57     A Brown Age

from OUR ANDROMEDA (2012)
    61     Artless
    63     Head Handed
    64     Nemesis
    68     The World’s Arm
    70     Streetlamps
    72     Liquid Flesh
    77     Visitor
    79     Karaoke Realness at the Love Hotel
    81     Products of Perception
    82     Miracles
    83     Big Game
    85     I Wish I Had More Sisters
    87     Magi
    89     At the Book Shrink
    91     Headlong
    92     The New People
    94     Nachtraglichkeit
    96     Our Andromeda

from SO MUCH SYNTH (2016)
    119     I Have a Time Machine
    121     McQueen is Dead, Long Live McQueen
    128     Artisanal
    130     Wound
    132     Dress Form
    134     But I’m the Only One
    137     A Mix Tape: ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’
    141     A Mix Tape: The Hit Singularities
    147     ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’
    173     Simone, Age 3, Late Summer
    175     Never Ever

from THE OCTOPUS MUSEUM (2019)
    179     Identity and Community
    180     No Traveler Returns
    183     Gift Planet
    185     There Was No Before (Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles)
    190     Bakamonotako
    192     G-Bread
    194     Sel de la Terre, Sel de Mer
    196     Thinking Lessons
    197     Our Beloved Infinite Crapulence
    199     Blueberries for Cal
    200     Are Women People?
    208     Our Zero Waiver
    210     Our Family on the Run

NEW POEMS
    215     Moving Far Away
    216     The Impossible Lesbian Love Object(s)
    219     Tell Our Mothers We Tell Ourselves the Story We Believe Is Ours
    226     Who Sings Whose Songs?
    230     On ‘Loss of Feathers’ by Ursula von Rydingsvard
    232     The Artist Jessica Rankin
    235     The Poets Are Dying
    236     What Have I Done?