Alexandra van de Kamp
Tulips Are Found to be One of the Most Delicious Foods for the Animal World
The dark pink windowpanes of the tulips
shattered and splayed on the April grass,
as if a nocturnal crime had occurred, a small crime, a crime
with parentheses around it. My husband set out
like an under-paid sleuth to figure it out. He read
on the internet about tulips and the appetites
of animals. He called his mother, an experienced
Texas farmer. Had it been a deer who ate those gelatos
of cinnamon and rose that had dripped their Italy and Rome
down the air in front of our rented cottage? A pale cottage
thrown carelessly against the side of a hill, like a discarded shell
given up by the nearby harbor (the rooms long and introverted;
the kitchen painted the shallow green of a swimming pool).
But during the night (a warmish one with stars full of relief
and regret in equal degree), we hadn’t heard any clopping
of hooves up our yard’s uneven stone stairs, assuming
deer’s hooves clop. The other options: a squirrel or rabbit.
For some reason, we couldn’t imagine either jumping that high―
for the tulips had been rather tall―and adeptly devouring
each furled house of color, each ragged fist of coral and peach,
each tipsy convent of kept light tottering
on top of the stem. Some blooms had disappeared altogether―
the green stalks truncated, as if having undergone a sixteenth-
century beheading. Or had it been a slow
undressing? The flowers unzipped by the larger night,
a knowledge they hadn’t bargained for come for them―
their dresses in tattered folds on the chilled morning ground.
In the end, we gave in and let the headless stalks persist. There was a shut
sadness to their blind vigil, an ascetic’s pride. They lingered,
as certain losses can, enduring longer than their original beauty,
and held their scarred peace with the spring. We had simply learned,
once again, how hungry the world is.
Archaeology
I knew something was horribly wrong
when I awoke (still in my dream) and saw
large, fleshy insects crawling, crab-like,
on my wall―their bodies a strange,
unaccounted-for blossoming. Then,
it turned into a dinner-party in which
all the guests were arriving. It was
like in Agatha Christie: the women
in low-backed dresses, as if someone
were slowly pulling a beige window shade
down their back, the high bird-cage clatter
of their voices.
At this unfolding event,
I’m the host and not yet
properly dressed. Slipping behind
a brocade curtain, I’m putting on my bra
when people begin to trickle,
like a silken, sequined liquid,
into the room. I’m at a loss
as to what to do, except that I know
there’s a man near me I would like
to sexually attract. I wouldn’t mind―
I think in my dream―if he strummed me like a lonely,
Hungarian violin. This is when I place
a black jacket over my shoulders
and begin to greet guests. And this is when,
upstairs in my bedroom,
the insects are multiplying
more fervently than ever.
A hazmat team has been dispatched
by some unknown, off-scene authority,
and men in white suits sleep in hammocks
strung a few inches above the floor,
which has become viscous with
a bright green, gelatin substance.
They’re waiting it out, waiting to see
what will hatch next: light-infused eggs
or a lapis lazuli sky. Will this dream be an optimist
or a chemist, events so often eluding
our current formulas and speculations?
These men talk in a foreign
tongue, as if they had become
the aliens; the puffy, crab-like insects,
the all-knowing flora that seems
to be colonizing the walls
and corners.
Downstairs, I’m busy
with small talk: the fog, your dress,
that dying wristwatch, and pondering
my appetite for a touch so sensual
it would tug at all corners of all
seven continents of my body, inundate
my skin with a claret of clairvoyant
waters, snap up all my window blinds
until I was soaked in Caribbean beaches
of sunlight. But the dream gets
decidedly practical. In the end, I’m taking leave
of my guests and trying not to fear
the oncoming autumn: its eerie,
rusty eloquence, its tattered
ribbons and messy plots. It’s August,
I say to myself, almost like a chant,
and as I say it, the month buoys up
around me, offering me its humid wings,
opening and closing, its panting crickets,
its drifting violins, dusty with resin,
and I accept this.
Alexandra van de Kamp lives in Stony Brook, NY, with her husband and is a lecturer at Stony Brook University. She has been previously published in journals such as: Court Green, Salt Hill, Washington Square, River Styx, Meridian, The Denver Quarterly, The Prose-Poem Project, Sentence and Connecticut Review. New work is forthcoming in 32poems and The Cincinnati Review. A full-length collection of poems, The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, was published by CW Books (WordTech Press, 2010), and her most recent chapbook, Dear Jean Seberg (2011), won the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Recent poems have been featured on VerseDaily. For six years she lived in Madrid, Spain, where she co-founded and edited the bilingual journal, Terra Incognita. You may see more of her poetry and prose at her website: www.alexandravandekamp.com
Return to July 2013 Edition
The dark pink windowpanes of the tulips
shattered and splayed on the April grass,
as if a nocturnal crime had occurred, a small crime, a crime
with parentheses around it. My husband set out
like an under-paid sleuth to figure it out. He read
on the internet about tulips and the appetites
of animals. He called his mother, an experienced
Texas farmer. Had it been a deer who ate those gelatos
of cinnamon and rose that had dripped their Italy and Rome
down the air in front of our rented cottage? A pale cottage
thrown carelessly against the side of a hill, like a discarded shell
given up by the nearby harbor (the rooms long and introverted;
the kitchen painted the shallow green of a swimming pool).
But during the night (a warmish one with stars full of relief
and regret in equal degree), we hadn’t heard any clopping
of hooves up our yard’s uneven stone stairs, assuming
deer’s hooves clop. The other options: a squirrel or rabbit.
For some reason, we couldn’t imagine either jumping that high―
for the tulips had been rather tall―and adeptly devouring
each furled house of color, each ragged fist of coral and peach,
each tipsy convent of kept light tottering
on top of the stem. Some blooms had disappeared altogether―
the green stalks truncated, as if having undergone a sixteenth-
century beheading. Or had it been a slow
undressing? The flowers unzipped by the larger night,
a knowledge they hadn’t bargained for come for them―
their dresses in tattered folds on the chilled morning ground.
In the end, we gave in and let the headless stalks persist. There was a shut
sadness to their blind vigil, an ascetic’s pride. They lingered,
as certain losses can, enduring longer than their original beauty,
and held their scarred peace with the spring. We had simply learned,
once again, how hungry the world is.
Archaeology
I knew something was horribly wrong
when I awoke (still in my dream) and saw
large, fleshy insects crawling, crab-like,
on my wall―their bodies a strange,
unaccounted-for blossoming. Then,
it turned into a dinner-party in which
all the guests were arriving. It was
like in Agatha Christie: the women
in low-backed dresses, as if someone
were slowly pulling a beige window shade
down their back, the high bird-cage clatter
of their voices.
At this unfolding event,
I’m the host and not yet
properly dressed. Slipping behind
a brocade curtain, I’m putting on my bra
when people begin to trickle,
like a silken, sequined liquid,
into the room. I’m at a loss
as to what to do, except that I know
there’s a man near me I would like
to sexually attract. I wouldn’t mind―
I think in my dream―if he strummed me like a lonely,
Hungarian violin. This is when I place
a black jacket over my shoulders
and begin to greet guests. And this is when,
upstairs in my bedroom,
the insects are multiplying
more fervently than ever.
A hazmat team has been dispatched
by some unknown, off-scene authority,
and men in white suits sleep in hammocks
strung a few inches above the floor,
which has become viscous with
a bright green, gelatin substance.
They’re waiting it out, waiting to see
what will hatch next: light-infused eggs
or a lapis lazuli sky. Will this dream be an optimist
or a chemist, events so often eluding
our current formulas and speculations?
These men talk in a foreign
tongue, as if they had become
the aliens; the puffy, crab-like insects,
the all-knowing flora that seems
to be colonizing the walls
and corners.
Downstairs, I’m busy
with small talk: the fog, your dress,
that dying wristwatch, and pondering
my appetite for a touch so sensual
it would tug at all corners of all
seven continents of my body, inundate
my skin with a claret of clairvoyant
waters, snap up all my window blinds
until I was soaked in Caribbean beaches
of sunlight. But the dream gets
decidedly practical. In the end, I’m taking leave
of my guests and trying not to fear
the oncoming autumn: its eerie,
rusty eloquence, its tattered
ribbons and messy plots. It’s August,
I say to myself, almost like a chant,
and as I say it, the month buoys up
around me, offering me its humid wings,
opening and closing, its panting crickets,
its drifting violins, dusty with resin,
and I accept this.
Alexandra van de Kamp lives in Stony Brook, NY, with her husband and is a lecturer at Stony Brook University. She has been previously published in journals such as: Court Green, Salt Hill, Washington Square, River Styx, Meridian, The Denver Quarterly, The Prose-Poem Project, Sentence and Connecticut Review. New work is forthcoming in 32poems and The Cincinnati Review. A full-length collection of poems, The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, was published by CW Books (WordTech Press, 2010), and her most recent chapbook, Dear Jean Seberg (2011), won the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Recent poems have been featured on VerseDaily. For six years she lived in Madrid, Spain, where she co-founded and edited the bilingual journal, Terra Incognita. You may see more of her poetry and prose at her website: www.alexandravandekamp.com
Return to July 2013 Edition