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Angels and Moths | Olena Kalytiak Davis

If a man once loved you,
he’s turned you into a moth.

That’s how he’ll remember
the flutter: that numinous,
that beating, that winged.

Angels and moths:
that’s who men love.

But I don’t recollect like that.
I don’t think I ever loved
that gently. And I’ve never
flown toward a burning
house, hoping, maybe
my faith lay in that
single thing left,
in that smoldering filigree.
I never reminisce
a sorrow that delicately shaped.

But sometimes I feel someone remembering
me that way: translucent,
crazy, awake only at night.
He’s regretting his fingertips
were not wide or soft enough.
He’s mourning me now.
He’s imagining me eating away
at someone else’s light.

And that’s perfect.
That’s exactly how
he always wanted to love
me. My wings, 
my hair-like antennae
hanging;
my frenulum
between his forefinger
and his thumb.

Postcard | Olena Kalytiak Davis

Lately, I am capable only of small things.

Is it enough
to feel the heart swimming?

Jim is fine. Our first
garden is thick with spinach
and white radish. Strangely,
it is summer

but also winter and fall.

In response to your asking: 
I fill the hours 
then lick them shut.

Today, not a single word, but the birds 
quietly nodding 
as if someone had suggested 
moving on.

What is that perfect thing 
some one who once believed in god said?

Please don’t misunderstand: 
We still suffer, but we are happy.

-

(With much gratitude to poetbabble for her impeccable suggestion/reminder.)

A Small Number | Olena Kalytiak Davis

So far, have managed, Not
Much. So far, a few fractures, a few factions, a Few
Friends. So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing
Too complex, so far, followed the Simple
Instructions. Read them twice. So far, memorized three Moments,
Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far, two or Three
Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some
Keats. So far, a scanty list. So far, a dark wood. So far, Anti-
Thesis and then, maybe, a little thesis. So far, a small Number
Of emily’s letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt
Not dead. So far, jim. So far, Love
And love, not so far. Not so love. So far, no-Hope.
So far, all face. So far, scrapped and scraped, but Not
With grace. So far, not Very.

There May Be More of This World Than Can Possibly Exist | Olena Kalytiak Davis

Not just the cosmos you have thickly sown into the small field
just east of your heart, but all that is held
in disbelief, in unfaith. Not only the barbed paragraphs of scrub
willows or the thoughts as thin as telephone wires,
but what’s left of the salt lick of your soul,
or of the woman you married.

And what isn’t: that half-built house, laid bare and open,
forsaken by the suicidal bricklayer, the carpenter’s deconstructing
hands. The winged mail carrier, just now
rounding the corner, feeling depressed again,
praying for deliverance or rain. No, not just that.
Not only the Dostoyevsky reeling
in his walkman: but everything the brothers did, thought about
doing, said …

And all that is held so high.
And all that is swimming, way underneath it.

Not just the trajectory, not only the first stone
or the second, but what’s left in your wrist, that which is
ancient, the African village that dances inside you, the medicine
you are feeding and the whole sky. The sky that’s no longer refusing

the ground and the heretics, the martyrs; the skeptics now willing
to take certain things under consideration:
the god that exists, and the one that doesn’t.

Not just the determination of the stars, but the stars
newly determined to understanding the clear
clear night. The blind appetite
of the senses, so well fed, it’s dreaming of vinegar
and malt. And everything else
you can’t, as luck will have it, bring yourself
to consider: the white-tailed deer stepping gently

out of the scratchy thicket,
her soft warm tongue, sweet and fresh as milk.

And all those quiet hours whn you thought you knew
what you were talking about,
but were only scrubbing your soul with salt,
saying: let what is grain turn to grain,

just not meaning it.

one of my favorites from and her soul out of nothing, though they’re all brilliant.

This house is a mess. Full
of solid notions
that keep turning into objects:
this simple sadness
that’s shaped like a fork
and the vague fear that crusts
these dishes. I’m vacuuming
over this grass-like pain.
Emptying pockets for the wash:
such a burden: not just wrappers
but keys and mints, those sticky
and sorrow-coated stones.
And this larger grief
that always needs to be folded.

All day I’ve been chewing
on my own acrid gloom,
trying to put away
the things you keep carrying
home from work: the possessions
of children and women
and drunks, stolen or cheated,
the tasteless unhappiness
of others into jars labeled:
Heartbreak, Injustice,
Just-Plain-Bad-Fucking-Luck.

“It’s Shaped Like a Fork”, Olena Kalytiak Davis

Remind me of your affliction.

I’d like a chronological exhibit
of the disorders leading up to our
conversation, like your old driver’s licenses
arranged in that one thin pocket of leather,
the phases of your hair, the splay
of your youth. Your current
eyes distorted by lenses, you’re speaking clearly,
louder than the drugs prescribed,

What I want to know about is the frenzy.

Sure, I can picture you
on Christmas Eve needing Mass
to last as long as a bottle of wine, but
I don’t get the religion.

Explain Jesus.

Talking with you was like opening an empty drawer.

Talking with you was like emptying an open drawer.
My hands overflowing with garments out-dated, or never worn.
What do you call that thing a priest wears
around his neck? The scarf of a priest …

Explain how we’re so immediately alive.

And how far can I carry the thought of you
when already the snow won’t hold me.
Even rosaries get tired.

And you’re not thinking me,
you’re just imagining my dead sisters.

You say you want to feel
the words.

You just want to live in Boston
with the painter Martha McCollough.

Sure, I can imagine the thought
of an easel, the idea
of thick paint.

But I want you to explain it simply, clinically.

Because now that I’ve thought about it, what
doesn’t begin with love and death and end in loneliness?

I’m only now beginning to answer your letter:
Remind me of your affliction.

“I’m Only Now Beginning To Answer Your Letter”, Olena Kalytiak Davis

this woman’s work does to me what all brilliant poetry ought to do— her words knock something loose in me, cause a dizziness close to vertigo, leave me befuddled and enraptured and curious about the world again.

The moon is sick
Of pulling at the river, and the river
Fed up with swallowing the rain,
So, in my lukewarm coffee, in the bathroom
Mirror, there’s a restlessness
As black as a raven
Landing heavily on the quiet lines of this house.
Again, the sun takes cover
And the morning is dead
Tired of itself, already, it’s pelting and windy
As i lean into the pane
That proves this world is cold smooth place.

Wind against window—let the words fight it out—
As i try to remember: What is it
That’s so late in coming? What was it
I understood so well last night, so well it kissed me,
Sweetly, on the forehead?

Wind against window and my late flowering brain,
Heavy, gone to seed. Pacing
From room to room and in each window
A different version of a framed woman
Unable to rest, set against a sky
Full of beating wings and abandoned
Directions. Her five chambered heart
Filling with the panic of birds, asking: What?
What if not this?

Olena Kalytiak Davis, “The Panic of Birds”