Jennifer K. Dick

Two new poems from 'Shelf Break,' a work in progress

[These poems, each containing 5–7 fairly short subsections, are from a manuscript called Shelf Break, which is primarily using and playing off of nautical terms in a variety of sound-driven ways.  (JKD)]

 

Boundary

 

1

 

in

to the binary of

earth and sea-

scape, sealskin a

Bermuda scale

optacon /orangutan

a zoologic prospectus

for animalia of

an inferior future

the writing (amoebic)

folded up

into a desk (disk)

hologram topped with

(dive) zebra-patterned

paper to

winnow the self /

other into

species (who?)

insulates (tied)

to fiction-

 

2

 

-alized passion

players, portraiture

portentous diagrams

of the dichromatic

diphthong stuck

on tongue

tonged out

teased away into

sound’s awaiting

susurration

murmur

murder from

gesticulation to

germination:

time

 

 

3

 

victimized / volcanic

vissitudes, voltigen meter

monitor the cross-

hatch, hutch:

watch shift

the verb to noun

tear to tear

read (in the

past) to read a

reed-song of

reel winching

in, pulled up,

caught,

red

 

4

 

handed a

loophole gun

whale cannon

fodder for the

fictitious, the

promulgations of

(re) con (de) constructed

Histoires a

mist as in

mystery a

mark of

the

unfinished

 

5

 

hold taught

rope-in thrust

and winch and

something about

the waft and

welling, wavelets

which belie the dark-

her swirling

predicated upon

fossilized sternums

uphauled (ended)

alphabets

of the critical

confrontation

triangulated

with the aid

of my (our)

astrolabe Shhhh!

Listen,

closer …

 

Timber Hitch[1]

 

1

 

to chide

to caterwaul

to christen

radiant or rutilated quartz

crystallography —

cartographer’s engraved  

maimings of parchment —

trident slaughterhouses

of old files, remnants

or rudimentary stacks

of startled pillars

of the radius

of redundancy

an echo

 

 

2

 

median of misconceptions

misanthropic

mesopelagic tropical

amoebic dysentery

diatribe or troubled

waterways:

spindly motors,

mortar, cracks,

fissures, figments

glint atop the gangway

gate or plate

schlepped up on

deck the

chained the

hauled the

cratered cargo

hold

ruinporn ornamentation

a lapsus

“next to baroque mermaids”                                                                      DA, 58

Neptune

narwhale

Nebuchadnezzar 

 

 

3

 

folkloric trials

survivalist phantasmagoria

heal heard hollows

slip overboard

underseaside faultline

ocean-rifts’ shadowed

reefs, cliffs, welts

swelling over-surface

skin parched crimson

sunburnt blind

instances of hooked

reminiscences: what

is dropped

into the

abyss

resurfaces

 

4

 

peal coffin reel

sluice rice prized

out packaging for

import /

              export

trails of thunderous

treasure, pirated skies

shimmied upmast

lickety split

to ex-gondolier

ex-ferryman

ex-dockhand

command new

crew or captain

buccanners, jack

of all trades, plying

wares and wiles

ex-sailmaker

ex-shipfitter

taste of the salty

seas all aboard

on watch

striking

out

swabby

tar

seadog

seafaring

mariners

all

 

5

 

cast

asunder / the stories

plunged pike

pumice stoning

their tribal soothsayer

stowaway, whisperer

of wisdom, of voluminous

ages, caretaker shamen of

pagan headshrinkers of

peyote visionaries spiked

pufferfish island

jungle inhabitants mad

forgotten duties

forbidden opening

wracked

body bolted

down to hatch,

to hull, to the wet-

mopped deck

of slippery sentences

written out

in lost tongues

she (I) mouth

incantations

as if / as in

messages sent

over wire

culled cables

in the

cartographer’s

ringing depths

(dis) (rifts) (rafts)

belonging

 

6

 

through time /

                         if time

cyclic discombobulated

minutiae, minutes count

down to, start at

a hundred, sixty,

sextants and astronomers,

logbooks and rolled up

parchment maps, salt

water faded X marking

the spot, an abacus to

calculate, triturate, a

depository’s countenance

continence conservationist

longitude and latitude

tatooed into the skin

that which

is

 

7

 

            be

longed forth /

forums numeric

de-bugged in the

coding colony, the

colonized decoded

cipher key, pass

word, book lost

hefted up atop a

shelf in some

onland library

atrium within which

the seafarer’s wife

waits and hopes

hides soft

murmuring

susurration of

windsheer seconded

by moontide’s full

rising: inexplicable

elected finite

dreamzone’s echo

tucked within

lost languages’

consonants

herald / hallowed /

homing device

devised preparatory

modules, purgatory

encased outboard

motor running full

throttle to escape

that / this

their / our

her / my

extinction

event

 

Poetics statement:

 

She writes: “As one stands along the shore, the roar of surf deafens as waves rush over and through each other. The eye attempts to trace a single wave’s arrival but another seems to catch and suck it under, adds itself to it, or perhaps it is that a part of it has extricated itself from itself, becoming a second wavelet, a third. In this manner, the sounds of words in these 5–7 subsectioned nautical term–based poems from a manuscript in process called Shelf Break stretch into form from one permutation of themselves to another. Something approaches. Favoring sound slippages and sound-driven imagery over direct statement or story, these poems by an Iowan, thus someone who grew up about as far away from the oceans as is possible, attempt to hear something carried on the water, to see the waves, a wave, and what it transports to or from, closer or farther away. These are poems about change, travel, displacement, disruption, formation. The permutations between (our) pronouns, (our) beings, the liminality within our aquatic selves.”  

 

Bio:

 

Jennifer K. Dick is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Lilith: A Novel in Fragments (Corrupt, 2019). Her collection That Which I Touch Has No Name, including poems in a mixture of French, Italian and English, is forthcoming in 2020 from Eyewear in London. The poems published here are from a new work in progress, Shelf Break. Resident in France for the last two decades, she is the cofounder and director of the well-known Ivy Writers series of bilingual readings in Paris, and she teaches American Lit and Civ at the Université de Haute Alsace in Mulhouse.


 

 

1. Timber Hitch: knot formed on spar or other object by wrapping rope around object and itself (source: Word Menu Dictionary, 221).

DA: refers to Greek poet Demosthenes Agrafiotis’s book Maribor tr. John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis, published by Post-Apollo Press, 2010.