Emily Critchley
ROOM ON FIRE
(first Hollywood & now this)
You suck the bloom of your flirt,
break each willing cherry plant. It is not enough
to say but it is willing. Come down from there
because the other was too difficult, put up too much
intent. To match you somehow terror mutual-
izing. I have poured you many warnings,
decoded the most major subtleties,
warmed your metaphors even, spat out
the obvious, still no sympathy grows there. From the be-
ginning sexual, not general de-
humaning. Not enough. Because the Gate to Art some-
how Holy, the gate Her, Soul-Gate, some
& not whole, & It is Not-her if not Her, She
is willing cherry break, & your eye camera, never
neutral. You take away
Her, exposed, it is your Advertise.
Advise. How we all know
endless growth, never full blossom how
ever. How we all experience. Except No. You don’t
remember, never grow—
a child ! Helpless at your body bursting
ripped to seams, stupid head-less vomits
no Art only gone to seeds to carry the next
breed. Dumb container—like an empty building
for your party! Re-sounding symbol
to be filled (the Big Idea You) or eaten by eyes
(notyou) or hissed at for feeding your new, too confusing
(is it not sexual. Is it notnot
sexual. Because no head?) because we all
grow up on that anti-bodies. Or
Walk through natural triangles? Try cultural rebirth
through triangle of fire. Where is natural?
Where is health? Is it only when You Idea. Try
disappearing beneath cherry ground. When you come back
up for air everyone is not there, does forget. But
triangle is still. Same brutal cut. Same not-there.
Same On-Fire with same same notunderstanding.
Culture notwithstanding.
§
REVELATION IN DISGUISE (rewriting John Ashbery)
for Amy Cutler and Sophie Seita
Yes, they are alive and not like triangles
And I, in my soul, am alive too.
I feel I must shout and write, to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn from me.
And I do amid the noise of casual isolation,
Machinery of history, the chance to sing of us
Superseded by you, is you.
You hold me up to the light in a way
I would always have expected, and yet still am surprised, perhaps
Because you always tell me the idea supersedes us, perhaps
You are right. Yet the great spaces loom.
Between our kind. I am ever yours to be forfeited, to desire.
I cannot ever think of me. If I begin
I am back in a room in which the chairs ever
Have their backs toward me,
Pelted by words, actual light
That laughs off suggestion, goes on producing Art
Under a general wing, same wild light of the day
That is always true. I pledge me to an idea
I was assigned by birth, which I cannot ever stop remembering.
Remembering to remember. Remember to pass beyond you into the us
In the winged shadow, the space you will never know.
Taking me from myself, in the path
Which the blind birth of the day has consigned me to.
I prefer “us” in the plural, I want “us.”
You should go from me, all victorious and whole
Like the light and the day.
And then I start getting this feeling of exhaustion.