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Overview
The poems in this extraordinary full-length collection ask you to force yourself beyond your own boundaries. They are curious, restless, and bold; they marry lyrical music and intricate metaphor as they search for other human voices beyond the rumblings of the apocalypse and the stubbornness of myth. From bare battlefields to crisp Antarctica to the gates of Troy, from rewritten history to love story, these poems ask for something more from the world than just riding till the spoke breaks. A poet for whom one way is easy but an easy way is worse, Miller traces a path that leads beyond our limits to where we set the sky on silent, where we're braver than science, and where we try to unglimpse what we've lost.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781775587279 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 72 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Limits
By Alice Miller
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2014 Alice MillerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-727-9
CHAPTER 1
skin
BODY
It's strange to want to give someone the earth
again. It's strange to be the same planet
but split to forge a new, raw globe,
past plundered by lovers and strangers. Forgot
the way my own earth cracks, and tries to make
its half an other's, forgot old stories re-made
to fable, to a minor bible for a plastic land.
We walk our planet and the print of our feet scrawls
onto our bodies. Each morning we walk to unearth
more mountains. Each day I sing the valleys
alive. Each night you find a dark pool,
and when you test it with your toe, a green
river ruptures. A quiet mirror opens.
APPLE
The night the earth's crust cracked
under us, great
hands reaching
to brush the earth's skin
to crane red fingers up
and caress the green
we felt the planet wrench herself,
rip soil from rock, split trees
shudder buildings till they broke
and tore our eyes wider
AFTER BATTLE
This stitching between bodies isn't skin.
It's only old rope, easily cut.
Where the seam tears there's blood.
I found a body under the trees,
thrown from its horse.
I wrapped taut silk around its bones
and watched the rivers roam the roads.
It was just me and the body.
I pretended it lived, and together we listened
to the sly sounds between trees.
* * *
I want you to come here,
restitch your head to your shoulders,
and form a word with your soft mouth.
Come here and surrender.
Because there are still days that my army
loses horses, days I lose sun
and try to saddle up the darkness –
and whenever we ride to battle together, it rains
and we cannot see sky for water,
and the grass becomes dirt, and
waves break the fields, and the bodies
all muddle into the earth.
And although your breath
was once pressed into mine,
I no longer know who's against me.
steps
WAIATA
Morning and your eyes
blow open, encircled by ripples of skin.
You're looking at the wall – at the white square the mirror once covered.
Did you really let out all the birds? you say. I put
my hand on your neck
but your head won't move. Your eyes
look like the holes left
when two stones are
thrown in a river.
EYED
One way's easy but an easy way's
worse. Fear
cracking on these lies' rocks, fear
oceans that'll swallow our rolling
eyes. Our masks may only
fool ourselves, but we are
the only damn fools that matter. I want you not
to stop your fear but reach your fingers deep in it.
Say well, what do we have here.
Say what can't we make when we're together.
AIR
You wake on the plane and mistakes ooze out of you
Mistakes ooze out of you like pus squeezed from skin
Look out the window and all's yellow
Every minute's infected
And it's your last chance to choke the ocean
for the plane to crash like a dancer
for you to smell the earth
We live in a staggering time signature
WHAT IT TAKES
Takes a war. Takes wine. Takes winters gulped
by birdcall, a smart girl who makes spit
turn to stone. She swears: it's so.
Our minds know no-such-so, and
soon-oh we'll lose all our livery.
Our vials are filled with dried-up springs.
Never to be a magician, Miranda. You quip,
OK, and I'll quiver. But our nevers are
always present. Our nevers we can't lose.
WAIATA
Of waking beside you worrying
your words into perfect circles.
Don't stop spooling. Not yet.
Hesitant hands still rock our old cradles.
Slightly bashed hands try
to hold ours up.
A bobbin, winding wider.
Keep riding till the spoke breaks.
TERMS
When I am coming to terms they come,
and I watch them slosh by the window.
This is a wooden block of time which
blackens at sky and ground.
We can't stop winding up
yelling from the backs
of trucks, on our way
to one border or another. I can't
keep tracks; they flee from me.
* * *
I've forgotten the range
of our instruments. Today
they crane their necks only to stare,
refuse to make sound: the cello balking
at the double-stop; the trumpet
bowed over, clutching its mute.
Tonight I'm sitting, trying to coax the piano
into articulating its complaint.
The keys stubborn. Each wait
between notes just sprays us
with want. We stab at maps,
with sucked-on fingers. The silence
is landlocking.
I am merging onto several highways.
I am, in principle, open to strangers.
Still the spaces keep growling for something.
* * *
Tonight down skinny streets in a city,
all the adults are doubled over the cobbles,
laughing or crying I'm not quite sure;
I've forgotten how to get close.
Instead I bob up and down like
a meercat, peering into letterboxes and down and down
dresses; sometimes I fall over
myself, and this can no longer be
an accident. We shouldn't be standing at an ATM.
We shouldn't drink from rivers shouldn't fill
ourselves with thoughts
of giardia crawling through our bodies'
linings. Still, there's only a snatch of a minute left
till my mind reverts back to its mirrorings.
I only hope in the interim
something may've snapped.
* * *
I look out, and the terms are still sloshing
by our window, past cobwebs nestled
in hedges like fog. Barely there.
I fashion some antlers
to guard my brain. I fashion some worlds
built of bits of sound I've captured –
a radio's bristling; a sticky
lock's turning; bare cough
from the last truck out of the
forest – and I keep the thought
(the hope?) that these sounds,
these small attempts at breath, might hold us.
IN SEASON
Over the fountain's shudder of water,
we unstitch seams, leave our clothing open.
I'd walk forever if I could today, borders-
aside, beside-you. Rain takes the day by storm.
Listen to waves mutter as sun
butters the water. A couple
of boots stroke road.
I'd walk forever if I could today.
I may wander but my wonder's still.
Ever lain a gun against
a forehead? Ever licked a bell's
tongue? To say anything other
than help is hard, but to say help
in an un-muddy manner
is harder. I paddle
through rain-needled puddles. Your beautiful legs, you say. (Your eyes, too.)
I miss the kiss of rain on sea you say. Where the melody's
wrong, it's making us righter. Makes laughter. Why rain
comes in starts and seizures,
in pricks of magnified
world. Large red line through dog. Large red line
through human. Scared to talk? Scared
to stand? We try to unravel each other, till
my legs round-yours-and-who-knows-what's-whose
but we do know there's no question. Guess the way
I feel each time I lose you. Then guess the way
we keep being found.
earth
RECON
When we go to the field
to recover our weapons
all our axehandles
have grown back to trees
and although we are ready
to bury our dead,
there's too much room in the ground
so, this is where we kneel again
O Muse, let us.
GROW
You tried to make a garden
in the attic out of dirt
dug from the corners
of your own green eyes
but your pupils held water
and flooded the floors
which sagged
and there were no pearls
and your grab-hold grip
crushed my fingers
as the land switched
to ice beneath our feet
ANTARCTICA I
Pulled into one human shadow, a single outlined
form, pulled into, struggling
as a canal that presses its walls
until a body's squeezed out
It's only when the engine
comes up behind you that you live.
How clean to see the imprint
of the bootsole on ice.
ANTARCTICA II
This land's the final garden:
inside, we are promised,
nothing will grow.
This is what we used to call a fairy tale.
While you struggle your arms like an angel,
eight red flags will make a fire.
* * *
Eight red flags will make a fire till
flames're exasperated by fact.
Still you struggle your arms.
Till the mountains grate down to nothing.
Till the volcano sinks with your voice.
* * *
But beyond breath,
perhaps the lake calms, perhaps the glacier's rush'll slow,
till the earth's set to still.
* * *
There is no cure we know in numbers.
The dying animal makes no speech.
We know only the continent. We know not to leave the land behind.
* * *
We stand our ground on the ocean,
and invent what we trust in the earth.
In this summer of constant morning,
we are braver than science.
* * *
Out on the ice, we take eight red flags,
and light every volcano for miles.
Still the red flags flapping and licking.
This is what we used to call a fairy tale.
Inside, we are promised, nothing will grow.
WET
The lakes were incapable of being
owned. They turned
wild. Their phones rang noon,
night, lines curled round and lingering
off bright cliff-faces. And the lakes, they kissed
those faces; they dangled their voices
off precipices. The lakes always
remembered their mothers; they could
will any dry
eyes wet. They did not stand, as we do, trying
to turn streetcorners
into wetlands by spitting.
ALBUM OF COLD
Sky so white the rain's blind
'I haven't the turbulence to give'
Day we set the sky on silent
At the beach we pry apart
Each mussel's tight lips
Chew the swollen insides
Above the clouds back and forth like breathing
When the waves no longer wet your feet
When the rock is in your eyes
The cathedrals will not stop singing
CROWD
We crowd to haunt the same myths, to show
another Christ, another eye-rolling St Sebastian,
to show gentle and sickly are the faces of saints
and St George attacking forever a dragon;
to show the Sebastians shot and shot
with arrows that keep their eyes alive
as Penelope makes day by day the shroud
so she can unstitch the night
and we sailors leap off ship's edge
to sink one siren's song
and let the others lead us to the rocks.
A MORNING IN TROY
Inside the wooden horse alone
Wooden walls thin enough to let light through
* * *
Humid under wooden skin, like the oak can breathe
Like this dull pulse is the horse's organ
and they've pulled down the city's bells and put in sirens
so now there is a nothing that rings and rings
* * *
For why it's all wrong, don't we always
have answers
how our minds shudder
like hummingbirds' wings
how we can no longer tell apart the gods
how above our heads, we handhold
our own low-slung haloes
* * *
Inside the wooden horse alone
and now the Trojans are coming closer
each voice a grey hook
sinking
into flesh
* * *
But when they haul me out, we'll all see
a girl pretending to be a goddess:
I cannot make an army.
I cannot change shape.
FAR FROM SHORE
What happens before the thump
of the railway tracks
slides each sleeper's eyes wide
our man, our woman
sends them in together
to hide from this fall of snow
what, before night
when the family sits quietly
around the dinner table
pouring tablespoons
of darkness into their meals
raising forkfuls from their plates
till their mouths are full of wild
SLOW
Inside, our throat makes
a cut noise, like when cloth is
caught, wrapped round
a realisation
When, at the party, we run short
of platitudes, we begin to bark
Then the dogs surge in
from fucking miles around
OCEAN
We make a map to throw upon the world
to catch the unknown islands that grow thin
to stop the ocean surging up to meet
the feet of folk who used to know the tides
There's never been a hierarchy of trees
and I know nothing but to clamber up
to watch the human heads I know below
and throw our map upon them as they go
while our screens refresh us every second
and soon they'll show the correct path to take
our programmes will erase all cold all distance
to point to lands that reach beyond the myth
but soon the water's pouring up the hills
because we cannot map the ocean still
SECURE
Troy's learned to close herself to strangers
She remembers the tug of the soothsayer's
grey eye, the ribbon strewn, the laugh
stole from the lips of folk
whom no one taught quiet
Troy feeds off the brain's mirages
billowing sand in the rearview
a footprint from the stables
one wet corpse on the grass
Troy needs no men at her gates
The earth holds up her walls
THE ACHE
When.
You are locked
in the wing
of history
with blood still
stuck in your wrists.
Shake the hell out of them.
In these rooms
the years
are just one breath.
BELOW THE SENATE
Below the Senate, the apple clutched, the breast
pushed low at the baby's head. Old bread, taken
in fistfuls and swallowed on the steps of a world
being made. The baby's eyes half open,
grow wide, grow squinted, grow used
to the body's rags and wrinkles.
After his mother is under the earth, the apple tumbles
to the steps, and its fall makes Adam's
throat bulge each time he speaks. Now it's morning
and the crowds seem to occupy the same space
as the sun, clinking their armour together;
they drink and sing
as the clocks chime day; men's shoulders sway
with the swing of song
on each of their sweat-spread faces,
and now Adam
(who's heard the men curse in the night), now
Adam chases Caesar through the crowd,
he pushes the songs aside to force
his body close to Caesar's side
and yell the warning they both were born for.
Caesar's face turns Adam's way – the great man's eyes
battle the light – but it's too late to stop
for sooth or stranger – and so Adam watches Caesar
march through the aisle made by the people,
and from below Adam sees him start to mount the steps.
By hands and bodies, Adam is pushed down;
he holds his golden throat as his tongue tastes earth.
He used to think he was the one worthy of an empress;
but now all he gets is a glance from a man
who's also due to die. The steps never
led where you wanted.
NATURE
Have you been to the forest in the dark my lord
No one can break a lock up there
Even if you're hit
There are leaves to wipe the blood free
In the forest you can glide
When you smell under the trees' shadow my lord
When you smell the land from under
When you see the bodies from the king's march to show
the plague's back my lord you cannot stumble
In the forest you only glide
There are designs that Nature has my lord
She will not share with anyone
EARTH
The armies of the earth have lit a line of fires
Today, they re-routed a river
to forge a slip between two mountains
Trees and chunks of earth
showered the local village, wood
crunched wood, brown water bulged
and dust burst over screams
Standing on the beach, see
the slip's lined by still trees
a golden triangle of earth
The armies' fires have shrunk to smoke
Slow dawn wipes its feet across sky
The forest calls a name we say is ours
body
TOWARDS
in movement, rushing, overlapping horses, bits-in-mouths, race
to push the stone forward
One kid balances his foot on a rock to control
a beast gone wild its face blurred
before the hooves slow
before the people carry water jars, men lead cattle
One pair of hands holds a halter worn off
Here the kid reaches for a horn
and blows
ALBUM OF BREATH
While the record plays? Should I say: Brahms-
loved-Clara, wrote each note for her, his
best friend's wife, after Robert had thrown himself
into the Rhine, and recovered then raved
till death-did-he-part? Do these snaps – one composer
gone mad, in a river; one beauty doing
as beauty always does; and one Brahms, a pianist
whose hands stretched
two octaves (I do not know how far
a madman's hands might stretch) – and to refer
to Schumann as the madman –
does this make these notes, we hear now, better,
or make us the epicentre
of a massive city
where nothing has ever happened?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Limits by Alice Miller. Copyright © 2014 Alice Miller. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Body,Apple,
After battle,
Waiata,
Eyed,
Air,
What it takes,
Waiata,
Terms,
In season,
Recon,
Grow,
Antarctica I,
Antarctica II,
Wet,
Album of cold,
Crowd,
A morning in Troy,
Far from shore,
Slow,
Ocean,
Secure,
The ache,
Below the Senate,
Nature,
Earth,
Towards,
Album of breath,
Burn,
The carriage,
History,
Through the eye,
The hole,
Unearth,
Countrymen,
Mahina Bay,
Orbit,