Paula Cisewski
Ghost of Human Contact
Yellow iris buttery
Fluttery falls and
Flounces drunk
In a vase on city water
The outer world
Begins with lovers
Ends in loss
There is no beginning
There is no end
There is only the circle
Some flowers being seasonal
So few planes nowadays
That when one flies by while
I’m making a poem I think
Hey a plane and say it
Out loud surprising myself
Look at a tree
I’m a person
But also I’m an echo
A tool or a weapon
Just five weeks into
A neglected message
If I wasn’t listening
No one was listening
An iris probably did not dream
All winter underground
To be beautiful enough
For cutting
Ghost of Human Contact
It’s never not birds but try
to write a poem during
the news about the news
after the news it’s never
after the news write
a poem during the recent
outrage cycle after which
nothing changed it’s never
after except something
changed
not what we expected
and not how we imagined which
was what All At Once and
with an apology from
the president? Good one.
Even in our quarantines
people are so relieved
when spring arrives
the sloppy mess
we hardly register because
some red wing blackbirds
perch above the walk and
suddenly in our minds
it’s not news it’s hopscotch
and suddenly in our minds
it’s never not birds but try
Ghost of Human Contact
What is memory. So many photos
document peak moments from stories that
slope low later. Time will give every story
an ending. What are endings. I’m in the basement
clearing out the ex’s trash. How’s this guitar still here.
Pearl acoustic buried behind married years. It was mine once
but I recall giving it away. I could only ever play
Sinead O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds”
which uses the same chords as Neil Young’s “Helpless” and
probably a lot of other songs, too. You think you’re
playing one song and someone tells you you’re playing
another. After the last bag went in the can, I didn’t know
what to do with the hollow sadness, so I drove to Home
Depot and sat there in the lot, radio off, nebulously wanting,
no shopping list. I watched the slow parade of people push
carts, trying with vinyl flooring or leaf blowers to make their
homes better homes. Just because you’re right doesn’t mean
another person’s not also right, but goddamn it. I know
which song I used to play, and it wasn’t “Helpless.”
It’s not that time gives stories endings, what does
any begun thing do but end; it’s the new understanding
of some particular endings. What is understanding.
Paula Cisewski's poetry collection Quitter won the 2016 Diode
Editions Book Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened
Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected
by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including
the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. See more of her writing, collage
work, and printing at www.paulacisewski.com.