Imaginary Vessels. Paisley Rekdal

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Imaginary Vessels - Paisley Rekdal

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      whether is the source or confirmation

      of this memory. Only the papery, gray-green

      streaks of road dust on the canes, a bowl

      of chipped porcelain inside of which

      were raspberries. Very red, very sweet, furred

      like my friend’s upper lip I remember

      between my teeth as we stood

      on the docks. The smell

      of iron and winter mist, her mouth

      like nothing I have tasted since.

       pen and ink reproduction by Troy Passey of a line by

       Edna St. Vincent Millay

      Hurricane of what must be

      only feeling, the painting’s

      sentence circling to black

      on blank, ever-

      tightening spiral

      of words collapsing

      to their true gesture: meaning

      what we read

      when not reading,

      as the canvas buckles

      in the damp: freckled

      like the someone

      I once left sleeping

      in a hotel room to swim

      the coast’s cold shoals, fine veils

      of sand kicked up by waves where

      I found myself enclosed

      in light: sudden: bright

      tunnel of minnows

      like scatterings of

      diamond, seed pearl whorled

      in the same

      thoughtless thought

      around me: one column of scale

      turning at a moment’s decision,

      a gesture I

      was inside or out

      of, not touching but

      moving in

      accord with them: they

      would not wait for me, thickening

      then breaking apart as I slid

      inside, reading me

      for threat or flight by the lift

      of my arm, as all

      they needed to know

      of me was in the movement:

      as all this sentence

      breaks down to O’s and I’s,

      the remnants of someone’s

      desires or mine so that

      no matter whether I return

      to that cold coast, they will

      never be there: the minnows

      in their bright spiraling

      first through sight, then

      through memory,

      the barest

      shudderings of sense:

      O and I

      parting the mouth with a cry

      that contains—

      but doesn’t need—

      any meaning.

       Elizabeth Beaman to her sister,

       Pribilof Islands, July 13, 1880

      Blunt, bullying, this season’s bachelors climb

      the rocks near Nah Speel, sleek backs blackening

      the waters inside their seacatchy. The old

      bulls line up in rows as at a burlesque

      house, while their matkas roll in surf, thrash

      upon the parade ground’s volcanic sands

      turned glassy from the constant passing of seals.

      One by one the bulls slip the line to claim

      their females, each dragging his choice to a private

      catch, as the bull gathers what he can,

      the matka cuffed and bitten on the throat

      if she struggles, the bull shaking her, banging

      her down upon the rock until she rolls

      her belly up, blank eyes wet in supplication.

      This is how I imagine it. The event being

      “no sight a lady should witness,” the Senior

      Agent forbids me from the rookeries; John,

      my husband now these thirteen months,

      must privately describe it. Libby, he tells me,

       you should see how soulful they are, it is

      amazing to watch them weep. He takes joy

      in their human qualities, recalls tales

      of selkies who turned to seal-like girls

      in surf, braiding their hair in seaweed plaits

      to chain an errant sailor’s legs. And yet,

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