VIA FONDAZZA: A STILL LIFE
Kira Henehan
the maids have not been here for months maybe days
when they arrive late so late I will fire them every one I am preparing my speech it will be abrasive Thomas brings the bottles drink deep from milk bottles high on this low bed crying in three-space gaps I have been giving small orders I want to stop
it is day now and raining you forgot your skin on my pillow we should by now have scores of freckled children but I have felt no differently left behind hair on my pillow nothing of confetti or wire I will say instead raveled I mean tea or brother eliminating nights we can or we can almost or we can not hang a bulb from a string and light an unspent age these decades of girls drowned on the riverbanks they weave heavy nooses from hair
they peer in at me here
it is time now to say nightshade or courtyard portico it is time now to know how fire dies hungry or hunger dies fire cold on the iron of fire escape I could maybe mistake this for absolute or be frayed in the cold brick day of rooftops I am almost convinced this is not the least of my worries
I am preparing my speech we can know only that a cup is a cup that a tree is a tree etc it will be abrasive we will be breathed out in May I can allow bottles intact be painted brown mornings the rest is angry spell me Russian letters for breakfast the milk in cacophony of bottles I have no more have no stomach for more Thursdays although no more also a loss for words I will tell them relent I will tell them to fetch me a hammer take a hammer to something hard watch relief-map cracks spread in rivers to the floor
if these walls were laid bare a labyrinth of life behind termites and mice drag small heavy traps from crumb to crumb they peer in at me here I will cancel the service there is no need for anyone to know me this day
a glancing blow strikes out the fire in oilcan dim bright of fire escape lantern say lantern
they can’t know the sameness of painting this ever still life of decay these glass relics how fire drowns itself in the rust of an oilcan how we fade lantern to dull you bright in this and drink from my milk bottles finger a bunting worn thin and dulled to dull ochre I am worn with fingertip attentions and eyes you fade worn and bright with teeth clash to teeth eyes bright and dim into die-fire lantern you have gone it is day now and raining
but then why this moist light a slanting through window dishevels echoes the swells of seas halfremembered imaginary museums with their shattered displays of crockery empty ginger bowls like ginger there is none just empty caves of crockery banded with blue and dust they are late so late
I will you will me you or allot an hour will you will me a word I am in you untold it is light in outside
I consult the lists speech milk hammer these legs we wear three of thin apropos of nothing I will say this incessantly I will swallow my tail I will throw something hot from the iron of fire escape I will ratchet and sow is my tongue I wonder black there seems a wine-night sidewalk in the swell of my palms graveled skin I am paved bereaved but seeing better I think with the rain
the corner of a square seems a deliberately limited territory note never right a right angle a triangle makes a sharper shape Thomas brings the squadrefrom the cellar and a dull bouquet of paper roses the light disrupts we would never know white but for white hatching the edges of not white otherwise might consider white wrongly an ochre perhaps ivory
I have procured yes a length of rope can suspend now disbelief at this leaving from chandelier ceilings or treetops we can say treetops can we say spin we can make dizzy of sequence withhold or string together lights to light the path and blow out as we go towards what is made slow by water
they peer in at me here they watch me watch you park at an unfamiliar curb can I come out now now can I come out out can I come now no phrasing makes pleasing you any easier might we not raise our voices this day
Thomas brings mail with the milk bottles there is a slot in the door of which I think fondly there are only two hours of the day when one can awake and not say for certain I awake in these hours when the shapes between objects take precedence over the objects themselves the space makes a slow child lay
legs on legs two of a doll laying slow legs on legs yet takes more care in this than I how can that be say nightshade nightshade say portico don’t please leave
the snow hasn’t come I have a telephone the walls are walls they peer in at me here it is wrong to say raveled it is wrong to reply not reply to rings like smoke or telephones I will cancel the surface fill the lantern with mail create only transient associations with walls etc I’ve become of a mind
considering fingers may be swollen from stingings I can’t lace the laces I rarely fall anymore I can’t remember feeling your voice razed the skin from my palms and now cracked statue skin and the scrape of gravel in each breathing too few degrees making equatorial my blood
your lassitude in these matters amazes
upon the Via Fondazza this next never next nonetheless I can crawl across a square a curious lot of children they measure things like angles they wear hair hanging down according to some mute order I shall make an inquiry I shall order milliner’s blocks I shall see them each hatted poor orphans and ribboned and shod I shall outfit each with squadre from the cellar I shall have the nightshade replaced with a fervor of hyacinth I have been giving small orders I want to stop
the maids have not been here for months maybe days they thus remain strangers we can know only etc yet things beyond the reach of my hand suspend in the merely speculative I have procured a length of rope I shall see the children suspended from treetops no that is wrong it is no wonder you’ve gone you said don’t please leave
I have lifted the blanket from the bed have I said lifted I meant loved in fingertip fray of bunting my stitches split I leak rust from the oilcan in a know now of triangled sharp yet even a needle opens only one pore might I ask when you knew yourself waterproof or if not why you park there below this window or why you wear such a bright shade of eye or how are your current relations with adjacent surfaces
or you have perhaps been paralyzed in a sway of tire swing unwinding you made dizzy in lantern light of eye the other words I say Padua portico are posing a danger I mean in absentia you are letting a danger interject in broken strokes your bouquet of paper dulled into don’t please dim the fire the oilcan I can burn the display circle around to the start and start over this exhausting circumference up in furious worry of smoke I can breathe
now can see now better perhaps with the day now and rain the curious children circle where are you where are
you resemble a gesture I’ve not made in months maybe days the maids if they dust will uncover forgotten surfaces you don’t remember having left don’t remember you are gone I can inhale your hair left behind you should not know these relics they make you
make sullen of mouth how dare I steal your surfaces your landscapes replace what you’ve taken with benevolent pennies from fountain outside the coals frozen over I believe no longer no longer believe in the seasons this day accidental and measured in time clicks of broken not-clock
and there is no more to be sleep but in thin beds of books piled for body scatter paper head where your skin left in flakes paper snow eight edges might make two squares an unjust game but that we were free of this infinite
unsteeped piazza unbroken of surface an uninflection rendered unrecognizable by repetition and so and so and so the cobbles this slapshad quinty I am becoming something of slow
I could throw you down soup lunch mightily on hard bread and wine I have lost you now seeing as see now how all journeys begin and end in Ithaca I have never unwound nights and perhaps now increasingly injurious and no one should know me when walls shadow floorboards split with forced march of looking in books they leave gaps like unglass windows there is surely a way to let the air in without inviting stray dragonflies they fly in at me here
the children have grown so they wear ancient in eye and walk two by two as it should as it would but for elbows interlocked I have lost you now they hunch and look painful eyes over cobble the age of paper indeterminate and so might I might I meet her and gape in the grandest tradition of gapeage and stop what I suspect these long shadows of veiling suspect the morning and Thomas is kind and the milk it is cold and we may eat small sandwiches in the shipwreck of window while I learn to love the you’ve gone it is day not now but in the laters where the space between here and a there that lives in the distance live I am fond now quite fond now of hills imagined they look I think as brown might look with dry and when last I saw you seemed a shade less of ash but seems are for splitting I can split can learn this to
love these walls and walls and your gray blown adust and how with my learning to breathe underwater
it is hard now to say what the water makes slow
if you look at them a frolic say or swim there are coins in the fountain all coldness torn between bright of copper and your dim passing the trees are blown over in storm and I feel no differently as when a when there was when was that that there was was there not a child once toppled over dunes caved-in curve of back and unrighted in sprawl and the spray footed yes in the quick of sand we might right the right angles have the instruments brought these ornery edges measured and scoured
suffice it to say we can know only that tyranny the tyrannical nature of red the last unwilling color it bends in the last fracture of moment of memory as realm or as red as the tide or the unbroken surface of stone out the window your eyes smooth as shinbones a blink once then again in the painted light the leaves fill in the certainty and cast pale painted light on what came before in the slanting of lantern those untidy rows of outside branches your form a statue in courtyard under rain
throw down soup watch canteen crack over head on what might I base this step a mid-land gone quiet or the milk bottles dry in copper-bright quiet of afternoon mooring
we must always maintain you said a radius it is heavy of head to be moored here however ipse dixit I say I will say I will still in the stilly night say ipse dixit and so you have said
you yourself said it
you said it said nothing before or since have been gone now since left and left this poor only hair for backdrop the blue bottle brown you know nothing of sameness this stillness amaze of lambent light or a dawning forever this springsame tempo the bootblack scrabbles in wake of children gravel crouched palms why the children have grown so and since and since wizened I will cloak them in eiderdown poor ancient orphans dim bright of lantern eye hurl you down fire break rigid in right angle shock in the shocking of blaze dim and brightened in dull paper roses on fire in fire the oilcan brightens in corners the deliberately limited or begin now in center but then where to begin the two of triangle four of square these bottles brooding they rear and retreat in a shinty of light or if moved a millimeter if moved but the same this ever in ever the sameness of painting these bottles if only you’d shadow the table a change
and whatever remains of what what of you or not possible but nonetheless until such a time as you if when might you
break this always same light and be still now
and still the bottles brought and still the dust making same these surfaces blue glass and brown pressed and staggered in mute order hair hanging down in flat denial of objects ranged as uninflected as piazza red brick repetition of cobbles and brick and smooth pane of glass and this inquiry sameness adherence of light slanting solemn ritual in shallow space weathered
how long can you edge my perimeter if could paint you in center I might stroke with swift eye-bright gaps across canvas leave area around open for room you see do you see same as me with eyes bright so cold with the windows iced over or sweating in swelter of April this May we are breathed out these mornings in boil of fountain the quiet of coins in season-chicanery make strange of all this
the children all aged play parachutes in piazza cobble and come out ancient and gray and hair gray of ash cracked bray of froze-water voices
made ancient in ages of pulled-down edges an age of red heavy canvas world does this notion of twinning drive you further to circumfer now that corners blunted into only center where we reside have resided since light dimmed a winter shades drawn but for what seeps between slats it has burned
me the cold sun of always Thursday angled knees beneath these legs laid on legs so bunkered in angle of corner to wait
and await your return in the corner of canvas bottles slightly shifting with seasons but remain much the same and the skin in the almost-calm of reverberation arrowing back incessant and so now return in time now the skin of things stretching tight enough to tear it makes it does does it not if things make in this day tight and a booming sound