Hannah Oberman-Breindel
Snow Moon, Madison
On this ordinary night, half-bitten
and star-spent, deep cobalt renews
its contract with the lake, the fog rising,
its own solemn incantation. Even if
we are mostly water, we do not want
to become it, not the way it transforms
so carelessly. Bodies are made
of the most porous cloth. At least
everything is safer in darkness,
whatever else I might believe.
The new snow looks almost blue.
In moonlight, a foil balloon tied
to a tree limb at the end of the street
shimmers like a refracted hourglass.
I’m trying not to miss as much:
how so much beauty might be buried
under this cold, the swinging gate
at the top of the hill, the ice-shrouded
branches. I’m trying to take these stone
bones and build a house worth visiting.
Here are the letters I’ve written:
I tear and scatter them, pretend
they’re comets. If I wish on just one―
I won’t tell. I recognize the constellations:
the sisters, the hunter, the damned queen,
tragedy stamped on that final,
deep tableau. But there’s fierceness in this
too, this white, this sapphire,
this pale, this, yes, spark.
Harry Houdini Talks About Love
I once put twenty-three needles into my mouth,
chewed so everyone could hear steel crushed
in my iron teeth. A body is an open wound, salt
in each crevice. The string I swallowed emerged
with each needle threaded. I could darn
all the holes in her wool socks with what
came out of my mouth. In Cincinnati, I vanished forty-two cards.
In Chicago, I escaped from a cell I had chosen
to enter. The thing I never learned was how to turn
something into something else. The rocks
stayed rocks, with their stern, tired faces. No doves
from a hat, no diamonds for tears. When the wind
blows, I face into it. I am not two men. The man
who disappears is the same as the one
who returns to her. Here is another confession: I knew
the tricks, but she held the keys. The point
is in the choosing, how each locked door
demands another way to open it, and how the body
is capable of folding and contorting, of becoming
both larger and smaller. This is the new magic. It’s about knowing
when to escape, about saying, it’s promises
that bind us, not shackles, and even if, when I disappear,
I prepare to be a ghost, I will not be
gone forever.
Hannah Oberman-Breindel’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Anti-, BOXCAR, Best of the Net 2012, Muzzle, Crab Creek Review, Stirring and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Return to September 2013 Edition
On this ordinary night, half-bitten
and star-spent, deep cobalt renews
its contract with the lake, the fog rising,
its own solemn incantation. Even if
we are mostly water, we do not want
to become it, not the way it transforms
so carelessly. Bodies are made
of the most porous cloth. At least
everything is safer in darkness,
whatever else I might believe.
The new snow looks almost blue.
In moonlight, a foil balloon tied
to a tree limb at the end of the street
shimmers like a refracted hourglass.
I’m trying not to miss as much:
how so much beauty might be buried
under this cold, the swinging gate
at the top of the hill, the ice-shrouded
branches. I’m trying to take these stone
bones and build a house worth visiting.
Here are the letters I’ve written:
I tear and scatter them, pretend
they’re comets. If I wish on just one―
I won’t tell. I recognize the constellations:
the sisters, the hunter, the damned queen,
tragedy stamped on that final,
deep tableau. But there’s fierceness in this
too, this white, this sapphire,
this pale, this, yes, spark.
Harry Houdini Talks About Love
I once put twenty-three needles into my mouth,
chewed so everyone could hear steel crushed
in my iron teeth. A body is an open wound, salt
in each crevice. The string I swallowed emerged
with each needle threaded. I could darn
all the holes in her wool socks with what
came out of my mouth. In Cincinnati, I vanished forty-two cards.
In Chicago, I escaped from a cell I had chosen
to enter. The thing I never learned was how to turn
something into something else. The rocks
stayed rocks, with their stern, tired faces. No doves
from a hat, no diamonds for tears. When the wind
blows, I face into it. I am not two men. The man
who disappears is the same as the one
who returns to her. Here is another confession: I knew
the tricks, but she held the keys. The point
is in the choosing, how each locked door
demands another way to open it, and how the body
is capable of folding and contorting, of becoming
both larger and smaller. This is the new magic. It’s about knowing
when to escape, about saying, it’s promises
that bind us, not shackles, and even if, when I disappear,
I prepare to be a ghost, I will not be
gone forever.
Hannah Oberman-Breindel’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Anti-, BOXCAR, Best of the Net 2012, Muzzle, Crab Creek Review, Stirring and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Return to September 2013 Edition