Jessica Goodfellow
Pairs
Trees on the hillside, by the wind picked clean as fish bones─
“Don’t confuse,” you said, “eliminate with illuminate.” But look!
at the fox, matted and dull as the downed leaves, not-quite-
vanishing behind a rock, to reappear there, by the pine, stitching
his way across the hillside, in and out of our sightline, our knowing.
He is not, this season, protected by summer’s green blindfold,
but exposed by winter’s scant pastoral, by its cold and barely
splintered light. And look! now he’s by that thicket, but no,
again he’s gone, and this time he stays gone, impermanent. I wait,
and yes, like you, he stays gone. Did no one tell him a cubic mile
of fog is spun from less than a gallon of water? Did no one say, “Do not
confuse destruction with distraction, erasure with enrapture”?
For you, who said, “You are what you measure,” I measure this:
the way we record your death date as July 18 – July 28, 1967.
My Mother Adds the Name of Her Brother, Missing on Denali Since 1967, To Her Parents’ Headstone
(Recovered)
An abandoned mandolin leans against the wall, silent
as the shadow of a bell, bereft of the wayfaring fingers
that once mistook its highest note for north. On a sheer face,
recovered: a sleeping bag, an ice axe, handholds of nothing.
(Unrecovered)
He who never thought to migrate, only wander,
is now not only citizen but mayor of the permafrost,
land where the only mail delivered must be written
on the inside of a snowflake.
(The name)
All maps view their subjects from above─
which could be why earth is the only planet
not named for a god. In the same way, my mother
thought to name me after him, but didn’t.
(The date)
We have no date, and no creation myth. What we have
is this: a bird that does not catch fire on purpose,
the belief that each of us is born with a timetable
scrimshawed on the bones that cage the heart.
(The marker)
We could not bear his body down, its icy heights.
In lieu we craved a marker, a thing more still
than our sleepless minds, pitch black pinwheels
blown through haphazardly by his windy ghost.
(The grave)
All calendars confuse time with space,
which is how they are rendered
finally useless, like a silver pendant bearing
(illogically, groundlessly) the Chinese character for empty.
(The body)
Grief’s stark geometry: his frigid ribcage is the edge
between symmetric snowflakes and an asymmetric heart.
Still his long, absent torso hovers, beckoning, blocking
the door to winter, to forgetting.
Hover
Permutations of his death:
his body up, a human kite by the mountain’s fist let go
his body down, an outlandish sand dollar, Vitruvian man under hoarfrost
his body, how many parts per million of the permafrost
At some point he must have known:
he’d never leave the mountain
he’d already left the mountain
he’d pierced the membrane between man and mountain
Whiteout, noun:
1. a blizzard, esp. in polar regions, that reduces visibilities to near zero
2. white correction fluid for covering typing or writing mistakes
3. a loss of color vision due to rapid acceleration, often before a loss of consciousness
Hover, canopy, the endless falling snow a shroud
What wish did the wind make
before tossing the coin of his body down
the well of forever?
*Note: definition of “whiteout” from Google definitions.
Jessica Goodfellow's books are The Insomniac’s Weather Report and A Pilgrim’s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. Her work has been in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. She has received the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize (Beloit Poetry Journal). She lives in Japan.
Return to May 2014 Edition
Trees on the hillside, by the wind picked clean as fish bones─
“Don’t confuse,” you said, “eliminate with illuminate.” But look!
at the fox, matted and dull as the downed leaves, not-quite-
vanishing behind a rock, to reappear there, by the pine, stitching
his way across the hillside, in and out of our sightline, our knowing.
He is not, this season, protected by summer’s green blindfold,
but exposed by winter’s scant pastoral, by its cold and barely
splintered light. And look! now he’s by that thicket, but no,
again he’s gone, and this time he stays gone, impermanent. I wait,
and yes, like you, he stays gone. Did no one tell him a cubic mile
of fog is spun from less than a gallon of water? Did no one say, “Do not
confuse destruction with distraction, erasure with enrapture”?
For you, who said, “You are what you measure,” I measure this:
the way we record your death date as July 18 – July 28, 1967.
My Mother Adds the Name of Her Brother, Missing on Denali Since 1967, To Her Parents’ Headstone
(Recovered)
An abandoned mandolin leans against the wall, silent
as the shadow of a bell, bereft of the wayfaring fingers
that once mistook its highest note for north. On a sheer face,
recovered: a sleeping bag, an ice axe, handholds of nothing.
(Unrecovered)
He who never thought to migrate, only wander,
is now not only citizen but mayor of the permafrost,
land where the only mail delivered must be written
on the inside of a snowflake.
(The name)
All maps view their subjects from above─
which could be why earth is the only planet
not named for a god. In the same way, my mother
thought to name me after him, but didn’t.
(The date)
We have no date, and no creation myth. What we have
is this: a bird that does not catch fire on purpose,
the belief that each of us is born with a timetable
scrimshawed on the bones that cage the heart.
(The marker)
We could not bear his body down, its icy heights.
In lieu we craved a marker, a thing more still
than our sleepless minds, pitch black pinwheels
blown through haphazardly by his windy ghost.
(The grave)
All calendars confuse time with space,
which is how they are rendered
finally useless, like a silver pendant bearing
(illogically, groundlessly) the Chinese character for empty.
(The body)
Grief’s stark geometry: his frigid ribcage is the edge
between symmetric snowflakes and an asymmetric heart.
Still his long, absent torso hovers, beckoning, blocking
the door to winter, to forgetting.
Hover
Permutations of his death:
his body up, a human kite by the mountain’s fist let go
his body down, an outlandish sand dollar, Vitruvian man under hoarfrost
his body, how many parts per million of the permafrost
At some point he must have known:
he’d never leave the mountain
he’d already left the mountain
he’d pierced the membrane between man and mountain
Whiteout, noun:
1. a blizzard, esp. in polar regions, that reduces visibilities to near zero
2. white correction fluid for covering typing or writing mistakes
3. a loss of color vision due to rapid acceleration, often before a loss of consciousness
Hover, canopy, the endless falling snow a shroud
What wish did the wind make
before tossing the coin of his body down
the well of forever?
*Note: definition of “whiteout” from Google definitions.
Jessica Goodfellow's books are The Insomniac’s Weather Report and A Pilgrim’s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. Her work has been in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. She has received the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize (Beloit Poetry Journal). She lives in Japan.
Return to May 2014 Edition