Strata
by Ewa Chrusciel


what's the evidence of
belonging

Kraina na bosaka. Your first sentence will always be in your native lung. My grandma had a big drawer with sweets which she distributed freely. She farted. Grandmas do not fart. She chased us with loaves of bread soaked in honey. Love is thick and yellow. I would bite her or pinch straight on her buttocks. Love is pinching. The grandpa was an owl. He saw the Holy Mother in the fields. Encounter is a linguistic cousin of country. I prayed every night that she does not appear to me. My nose was too broad for his taste, so he told me to keep it squeezed with my fingers for 15 minutes a day. When he died, I refused to go in for the fear he would criticize me - still. My neighbor died in the window from the lightning. Lightning is a strange apparition. A big moment yellow. In storms I close the windows. My brother liked to throw the cats into the well. For his birthday, he would bring my uncle nettles. Then there was Tigress Mother. She would pretend to be dying when I did not want to eat ham. She would bring the precious stones home. When the moon was full she took me to a neighbor to trim my hair. I was her biggest cat. Our father would stuff us with apples. I ate so many I became the apple of his eye. He would catch mice for me so I could run with them on a leash like a queen of the courtyard. When there were no mice, I would be overcome by strange despairs of boredom. In the face of no ailment, my father would ask me to spit and catch. Instead, I would let the budgies free. To be attached to trinkets, extravagant frills and flounces.


sometimes
sinking in
imitative
thoughtlessness

The threat of atopia calls forth a veritable ontomania - irrational desire to have and to know as much determinate presence as possible. Fear of having an empty mind is really the same fear. Should I call him? Instead I write. The lamps are the whales of light. Instead, I would let the budgies free. We found a wriggling egg in our garden. We warmed it up at the bonfire until it broke open. Baby Quail. We had to feed it with milk. Even mother warmed up. We took it to our grandparents. They told me it died when trying to fly. I suspect someone accidentally squeezed it with a cooking pan. I am just on the other side of the mirror. Everything preserved under the glass wall. We do not know how to remain in repose. Is that why the Tibetans tie their children to the poles - in case they might wander off, get lost? I was called a chocolate missie. My parents would hide the chocolate in the highest cabinets. I would pile desks and chairs and climb. Once I fell, and lying on the floor, could not catch breath. We would like only for once to get where we are already. And all of it for the love of chocolate. My grandma had a big drawer with sweets which she distributed freely. What are the true desires in this disguise? During fights my father would remind my mother she was a Tartar. You said not even grass has such thin hair. Everything was under the custody of 13. It entered us perplexed by the theory of our non-incidence. The signs were sprouting. Too discernible in their silence. Until nothing clicked.


death most reveals itself
by single shoes.

Scattered on the street. All the tracks covered. Only the sole still lurks. And there gaping pits. A shoelace still shivers. As a child I would sit in the room and crave for some accident. To be an onlooker. A voyeur. In the face of no ailment, my father would ask me to spit and catch. Here shoes are hung on electricity poles. My American students tell me it used to be a sign that somebody died. Or a secret sign for drug dealers. When we were little we would drive with our parents to the beach in Bulgaria. People would stop us and try to buy lipsticks, chewing-gums, medicines. There is no life without a reimbursement. Once when we were crossing the borders, my father woke me up - there was a dead body on the road. Big moment yellow. I am just on the other side of the mirror. Everything preserved under the glass wall. Every summer when I go to visit Poland the shoes are always there on the road. A veritable ontomania. Reproduction of being. Non-bodily here in relation to an already known there or set of theres. There is no there there. Things break in order to reveal. A shoe would like to burst forth. Find uncertain whole. When my grandma died, I refused to take a photograph with her. Only after the funeral, at the cemetery, my face resurrected. With a serenity. I saw her in a white wedding dress with my grandfather. What a wedding feast! Next day she woke me up at four in the morning and I wrote my first poem.


dear owl

Thank you for stopping by Normal on 23rd March 2004 and perching on this little pot-tree in front of “Other Ports.” It’s been a week and I’m still thinking about you.
Thank you for overlooking the fact that the little porch of the other port was by no means a cannon. And those passing by were no mice. I am delighted that taking into consideration those slight landscape changes, you nicely dozed off, replacing a little statute of Buddha bored to death with this mercantile day- to-day meditation. I (having a little weakness, that of Zelig’s syndrome) perched on the little bench opposite and like you, tried to maintain my balance too. People passing by with fully-fledged American smiles and understanding were saying: “it’s nice to be taking the air outside.” Some more observant, would look up and see you and yet exclaim: “Oh, it can’t be real.” Being a responsive person in every possible manner, I examined you critically. Thought of Dürer: Das Käuzechen, then the other possible names: civetta, choutte, otus asio, bubo virginianus, Amirus Barakus. Explosion of owl. The desire to have all. Horror vacui. Dear Eastern Red Phase Owl. Find this poem enclosed. Please consider this for your beakation. With every kind wind, yours tuftully, Ewa Chrusciel, the family of crex paternus, wading crane.
Dear Owl, I have sent you a letter a week ago or so. No answer received. I wonder where have you been? Perhaps my letter too informal for your highbrowness. Perhaps a bit too editorializing. You are a bird of considerable sageness. There is no country without an encounter. Please reconsider my poem. Please find corrections enclosed.
Attached below:
Eastern Red Phase, all day clenching with little tufty claws to one chosen branch of a little tree-pot in front of the "Other Ports" shop on the North Main street in Normal.
"It can't be real" people passing by said. Each feather swaying to only one key.
Can it be real? Little Eskimo. I will never write to you again until I have flown a mile in your fluffy moccasins, in your fluffy moccasins.


pentecost 1

You wrote: that explains a lot. This morning I woke up clapping! Luigi thought
it was for him but after about half an hour of non-stop clapping even
he thought it was a little weird. I thought that it meant I'd come down with Turret's syndrome or some other mental illness that results in uncontrollable behavior. Thank goodness it was merely the Holy Spirit descending on me in great waves of applause on Whitsuntide.
Miss you, C. PS I've done some preliminary drawings of our villa in rural Poland. The garden is in the shape of a Chopin Nocturne, if you can imagine that. I'm thinking we won't actually need a house. We'll be like Lear and Tom the fool (I can be the fool, it's okay) walking around on the heath saying, "Blow wind and crack your cheeks." Doesn't that sound nice? I hope that being a deranged patriarch will work for you. Actually for some reason the left hand stopped clapping suddenly last night around 10:30, which is pretty damned awkward. The right hand continues but because the left hand isn't meeting it I think I've destroyed my right elbow. At any rate, the whole forearm and hand now dangles sort of uselessly from my damaged elbow and flaps back and forth still desperately trying to clap. I mean, this is some determined (and painful!) Holy Spirit. I wish it would back off for a day or so because this can't be good for my tennis game. You said: I take you so much to heart that your soul is causing large growths on my body where your abundance of spirit exceeds my capacity. It's as if I need to imagine that I'm in love with you in order to maintain a certain energy or feeling to keep me moving forward toward something that has nothing to do with you. You're more like a midwife than a mistress. I say: I am a landscape that you just managed to incarnate. Or a landscape where all orphaned chances take on unabated meaning. So it is perhaps more than just making me or you less lonely. I wade from kairos to kairos. We crave for seasons, for red-letter days. We wish they took off like cranes, beating electric letters in the air. We would like only for once to get where we are already. If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. It is not your face that I desire. It is not your body that I desire. Something inside it. Something where I cannot get.