THE TATTERS
WESLEYAN POETRY
the tatters BRENDA COULTAS
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS | MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2014 Brenda Coultas
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Parkinson Electra Pro
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green
Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their
minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coultas, Brenda.
[Poems. Selections]
The tatters / Brenda Coultas.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-0-8195-7419-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
(Wesleyan Poetry Series)
I. Title.
PS3603.O886A6 2014
811'.6—dc23
5 4 3 2 1
Cover artwork: Spiderweb Rose, image by Portia Munson, 2009.
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF BRAD WILL
Brad Will was a poet, Indymedia journalist, anarchist, and
a friend of mine. He was murdered in Oaxaca, Mexico, on
October 27, 2006, while filming a street battle between the
Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s thugs and APPO, the
Popular Assembly of the People, during a months-long teachers’
strike in which at least eleven were killed. For more information:
CONTENTS
A Gaze 15
The Tatters 20
Note: Bradley Roland Will, 1970–2006 47
Acknowledgments 51
THE TATTERS
MY TREE
I found a pearl and wore it in my ear
Deep ocean echoes sing like a seashell
A girl promised a purse filled with jewels, if I would be her friend
Purses open secrets as priceless as pills in a jeweled box
Loose pearls, enough to imagine what a great loss that necklace was or was not
I like to see metal turn red and glow and to hear its hiss when it meets the water. Leather bellows, suspended from the ceiling, pump air into the fire. Long-handled tongs and picks forge mostly nails. I open all the old purses. There might be change left in one.
I built you a tree of light to see by
To listen to digital libraries in your palm.
Renamed myself writing this book, renamed myself after building this tree
I burnt candles all night to grow these leaves.
I fed books to the flame, to make a blaze to read by
Mined libraries to power this tower of light
Built sparkling branches
with flaming pages for leaves
dense as the weeping willow’s cascade of curls
On the mountain ridge my tree stands head and shoulders above the hardwoods. Along the roadway wooden poles, bathed in chemicals, hold up a network of wire
I built a tree, more cell than sweeping pine or black walnut, as natural as pink pine needles or a silver holiday tree. Glittery pine boughs glue-gunned on
No needles on the floor
No forest smell
My gift is glittery and eternal
even in synthetic shreds
dumped on a landlocked city sidewalk
it finds its way to the sea
A MASS FOR BRAD WILL
If I were a quill I’d write in bright feathers all about you bursting into flight over the heads of cops
If I were a handsome feather, I’d walk to City Hall in full plumage and release all of Manhattan’s political prisoners
If I were a quill I’d give you life on this quiet page
On a four feather day, last one ruffled another grey with black-banded top
Then pinfeathers regroup to make a full on …
You might think his body was blown to bits or burned to ashes
Thrown into a favorite body of water
Maybe one of the great lakes
You might think he was made of feathers or of bird weight
No, he was buried whole, perhaps with bullets intact.
Critical mass. Yes, he liked to say it.
