Overland by Natalie Eilbert

Author:Natalie Eilbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

THE LAKE

An attempt was made. I told S that we are not

the sum total of our mistakes. I said it

as I believe I am the sum total of my mistakes.

I consulted Lisa Robertson for guidance:

“The truth is, everything that isn’t poetry bores me.”

I think this must be true because some days

I state its opposite. Saturdays pour through my body

like tea water. I see the shape of my face

in the steam of a mirror. I do not want to see

the shape. I have been staying with S for a number

of reasons. I am scared. I want to place me

on a hook and back slowly away, and the theoretical

desire clings me harder to ego. Poetry bores me.

The weather bores me. I open my mouth to nobody.

I push my body against no body. The sky opens and I think

of Geryon’s red wings, that in text he must stretch

in secret for us to see the small mutiny of cells. Cells

paned to cells, lonely like mythological scales.

I walk with a black tourmaline tucked in my bra,

and my lower back snaps when he calls me. He

was once the dominant you in this poem, but

is there any house so strong it couldn’t burn? Where

lies the vocative in the symptom of elsewhere?

My arms

slack against me, they move toward nothing

but the weight of arms. The truth is I fumble

in a clever way and mean every word of it.

When I read the word house, I see a line of windows,

cells paned to cells, a train whistle. Is this what

insouciance feels like? I note on my phone

to write a poem called “The Door in the Corner,”

but the story of the Dogon door is not my story.

The relief in the Malian wood is not my relief.

I have protected myself as best I could. It did not

keep me safe.

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