Kristen Orser

(I don't cut myself off from the world, I answer the telephone)

Increasingly, do we need a manifesto?  There is a boy I know who carries, in his pocket, an opinion about contemporary poetry.  There is a woman I know who puts mirrors in her trench coat to see if her body is rounding, to see if she is changing her mind or direction.  It turned out it was the earth moving, not her shifting foot.  (My father has cataracts and cannot read without a magnifying glass, but he too wants to know why the poem is happening.)

                                                Yesterday, I google searched “poem” and “why is this happening?” 

There are so many things happening that are called poem: and even more things happen and shake themselves into a question.

                                                (William tied his shoes yesterday and it wasn't a bow or a bunny                                                       going into a hole, but a knot.  He seemed proud of his knot.  Who                                                     am I to tell him that is not tying his shoe?  And how is this not like                                        our knotty poetic condition?)

Sometimes I think it is all silly sticks.  Sometimes I say darn it and I mean it.  The poem is my arch nemesis, a curious thing that doesn't give me a choice.  This is not revolutionary or post anything.  I wish I could get past anything: a statue of St. Joseph is buried near Walter's house; Walter is buried near Mary; Mary is buried under a crooked tree in the St. Jude section of the cemetery, which makes her hopeless.  My father's family is buried somewhere, but the names don't match up to the stories he tells about two brothers dying: there is only record of one brother and a baby boy who never made it long enough to die.  There's so much inconsistency, so much that is made up: a great aunt who died with the sheep, a great grandfather who's buried in the Erie Canal, and so much of the family is myth. 

                        :           I used to care more about the truth, about the narrative,

                                    but there isn't a clear narrative anymore.

I used to, also, care about myself.  I don't care who is writing the poems, I care how the poet is thinking.  I am thinking the I is split and having babies it doesn't want to have.  Sometimes the I is wishing itself away (a way?).  (Do I need to explain this?  (Doesn't everyone think this way?))

And what am I to do about the fact that I do think this way and I think so much that if I don't write I get drunk and tell everyone stories.  Too often I am telling a stranger on the bus how much I wish my diminished referentials were not diminished—and then I have panic.  Too often I am telling the woman who is crossing the street that Matthew left and he's never coming back—and then I have panic.

                        I panic because the “I's” and “yous” are in dialogue with each other, will not stop                 shifting pronouns.  And it seems provocative to shift tense or find an                                                association between what is and what isn't there. 

                        :           Toothpick, says one I.  And one you says, Exactly.  It gets so complicated. 

This isn't a manifesto and some are saying my generation is so blogged and livejournaled that they cannot stop talking about themselves, that they cannot stop ranting long enough to put some gusto in their intention.  Maybe.  Or maybe there aren't rules and the I isn't the self and the self isn't even sure it exists anywhere but in the blogosphere so there can't be any rules for something that doesn't really exist (?).  And our poetic inheritance is full of ten dollar words for things that seem to             just     happen.  

                                                            :  There are mysteries that seem more interesting as                                                                mysteries. 

I am sorry I can't be more strict and it has nothing to do with my parents never saying “no” because eleven times my Daddy spanked me so hard I couldn't sit down for weeks, and I was seen and not heard while my mother sat in a car and decided whether she was going to leave or stay this time.  Maybe I can't be strict because nothing was clear: Mom loved Dad, but not the version of Dad I knew.  Grandpa was a great Grandpa, but he was a drunk when he wasn't around us.  Tara is my half sister, but I'm never supposed to call her that unless someone asks.  I loved Matthew, but Matthew was depressed and sorry he couldn't love me back.  William is not my son, but calls me Mom because he doesn't know there are women who are not his mother. 

                                                                                                (What is clarity?)

I remember an echo I heard at Bear Rocks, but it wasn't my echo.  Someone called out “open” and “open” sounded back.  I couldn't see the person who first said it, but I could hear the non person saying it over and over again.  Nothing opened, but the idea of knowing who said it and why they said it and when they said it and how they said it died.  The word pitted itself in my ear and I didn't have a choice but to listen. 

                        :           This is not unlike the five bullets that went into George's spine and killed                                          him or the genetic code that gave Caden spinabifida, but not Ashleigh or                                           Timmy.  I don't remember having a choice, but I remember listening to the                            news when the buildings fell down.

I've been thinking about this a long time and suddenly, “Oh!” the manifesto is not a manifesto, but a December where you have time to hibernate and consider what you are doing.  :     I am doing what I need to do to avoid the stasis that isn't even real, but contrived so we don't see the 4000 dead.  :       I am doing what I need to do because I see better in the future and want to write, write, write into a fiction that is suddenly present and eating dinner with me.  I am learning that things are not clear; I am learning that I have anxiety because I want things to be clear, I am trying to let go of the past and the many many times my mother has asked for grandchildren.  I cannot give you what you wanted, but I can blind you for a moment and renew your (mis)understanding of what is real and what is not real. 

I like the idea of the really real because it doesn't exist in this world.  Plato, you old dog, you've done it again.  I want to be an egg shaped person but I want the other half to be halves so that I can have a few lovers to suck my toes.  If we had the really real, even the real love, we would be at the end of the book.  What an empty space!

The change of heart is like the changing of bodies and, yes, I want Penelope to undo the weaving because it lets her determine who she will bed with. 

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