Poems by Laynie Browne
from Abandonment Texts
To the Stone Washerwoman in a Column in Gaudi’s Park Güell:
All persons are of rough and polished parts. I offer my words to the public square, place them in stone crevices to be bathed in spider silk. My words have been consumed by adamant sculptures.
Today I stumbled and did not exist by hand. I walked ten miles for this purpose and abandoned my poems. Why we must say goodbye? How might I explain: olive trees, rosemary, marriage. I married beneath one hand. Your escort. This obvious berth, in words. I married a photograph of the aroma of rosemary, and timely mediations, sea creatures and the ephemeral.
I wanted to be the stone washerwoman, in a column. I wanted to be her and to be with her. On a day entailing the lengthy surgery of a friend. Will the words of any poet invariably contain trauma? I cannot advise you to put the unlaced narrative down, like the one who carries a boat needlessly through the desert.
When your message arrived I had just found the oldest remnant of our common ancestors. Yet the building was under renovation and all that remained was a metal plaque. And because I was not allowed to enter the sanctuary, instead I turned a corner in the old Gothic neighborhood, and found myself in front of Satan’s coffee, which had been highly recommended. I entered, ordered, opened my appropriately red notebook. I waited for the end of complicated surgery, burials of history, explosions. Once settled I was informed that the place was to close in ten minutes. Expelled from Satan’s protection and thrust again into half-hearted rain, to traverse the capillaries of stone.
I gave myself away to the city once given to me as a gift. It seemed obvious to give myself first to the public square. To see what the pigeons, the light and the winds would make of me.
To Everyone & Her Resemblances,
Less afraid each day and also increasingly uncertain
I found her looking up, her sleep open
She might once have had a face of burlap or muslin
Eyes taught by a light which made her implausible
Lines hook into rafters but you won’t see any language strung
You prepare the space before your arrival
Conjuring is less common than cajoling
You are not weary, hungry or lonely yet your lack is adamant
Non-material scribes have rarely left your side
She stands to face you without any face
You work around her missing or obliterated features
Coldness creeps in under the prepositional threshold
Your nurselog is buried in gauze
The forest floor was made of sound
Where you stepped you fractured several sentences
First the surface powder leapt up at your approach, then the ice crackled beneath
Long diagonal fissures or gowned rings of ice are common
His mustache was made of icicles and his mouth was the slit in a trunk
Other trees had obvious hats, horns, ears or expressions
A boulder covered in snow impersonates an ambitious cupcake
She has not been out of her attic but I’ve brought these images to be devoured
Devoid of instinct the temperature drops
You were too cold to photograph naked stars
You don’t require anything yet still search through miniature prospective fossils
Does your reticence possess a name?
How long have you known me?
When the woods turn blue you walk without waiting
The hem of your misgivings is unusually bright
A sheen along your lower mobility
Your purpose slows when studied critically
You only have one phosphorescence but it has ably functioned for thousands of flowers
When asked for warmth you remain unmoving yet your outer layers brighten
Deeper veils unfurling may only be regarded from cloaked interiors.
If you enter you understand that to speak of what occurs is not only stolen but a breech of form
You stand in the center as firmness, as if you were a tree
You drop curled parchments as you disrobe
Your horizontal scripts are not transparent
Opaqueness is not an answer and yet protects your minute eyes
Your hands, if any exist, are impossible to divine
Yet I imagine one held up at the exact angle your face would tilt, if revealed
Hand and face receive color wheels, entire individuated rays, coronets
Your vertical mast is a spire, an anchor, a visible point above a city
Congregants are attached to your existence or non-existence
Your human aspect is a viable compass
Your surface is only what an observer considers froth
And yet you are a sturdy apparition
Thought forms settle in your eaves to glimpse you
You rose interminably, only once, yet never tire
If stillness is virtue, stalking
She is the quiet center which always exists
You prop her on a bookcase where you can see her
but turn her over when too much of her escapes
You came home meaning an assortment of frayed
straps and attachments, weathered animals
You’ve missed her until this moment
You’ve been inside the heavy mantle
That’s why so many coats desire your company
That’s why you don’t stop going under the downpour
The coat of any animal keeps rearranging itself
She is silk mist, gray pardon, dark causation
You arrange her over your shoulders
When your head is bowed you are conceiving
and when you look head on everyone else
will come under your protection though
they might see it as mania, superstition
controlling aspects of light
How else to conjure the image required
a fluid fecundity
Laynie Browne is the author of twelve collections of poetry and two novels. Her most recent collections include PRACTICE, Scorpyn Odes, and Lost Parkour Ps(alms) in two editions, one in English, and another in French. She lectures at University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore College.