Eliot Cardinaux

“I am a poet of the lyric lineage, favoring the lucidly bent, bare syntax of George Oppen, & the strange torn-off clarity of Paul Celan. Mine are poems of compressed language, of a self folded in on itself. It has been said that there is a void in my work, & a trace left by other poets. That void might be filled or left be, at the edge of our correspondence.

I am a musician as well. As a pianist & composer, music takes place for me as a process of correspondences — between lyric & melody, composition & arrangement, player & player, improvisation & audience — where images & phrases are loosed from their moorings into focused, energetic sound. My poems are therefore, likewise scored, by turns as inscription, & voiced for performance.

It should be noted that there is an ekphrastic component to some of these poems as well — that I wrote them while ‘diving in’ to recorded sounds by other artists — correlating, in the case of ‘You Can Know Where The Bombs Fell,’ to percussionist, pianist, & sound artist Flin van Hemmen’s recent release of the same name (Neither/Nor, Brooklyn), & in the case of ‘A Black Box For The Holy Ghost,’ to the recently departed avant-grade jazz legend Henry Grimes’s double album of uninterrupted bass & violin improvisations, ‘Solo’ (ILK, Copenhagen). This adds another layer to the process of correspondence for me as well.

I would particularly like to mention bassist/composer Will McEvoy & drummer Max Goldman for bringing these poems to life recently on our second trio recording together. You can hear two of these poems here on ‘Lying in the House of You (Piano Day).’ This composition of mine will soon feature as the opening track of ‘Out of Our Systems,’ forthcoming on my label, The Bodily Press. This is a collaborative trio, with each player contributing in equal measure. We have no leader. Enjoy!”
— Eliot Cardinaux

Listen to “Lying in the House of You” (Piano Day):

https://soundcloud.com/user-130352928-318430694/01-lying-in-the-house-of-you?si=a86bd434da3040e09759c854338a2c01&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

 

LYING IN THE HOUSE OF YOU

I. The Silent
Cold fire: the
wolves’ eyes flicker
into no one’s language.

II. The Victors

Rain stings the pulse
of the fields we lie in.
Stare loudly into the flames.

III. The Named

Torn from the flowerless rose
I have a single thorn of light
to carve their constellation.

IV. The Lost

I am a stranger, & this is their bread.
The knife is a sky between us.
Break it with your hands.

V. The Hungry

The crater’s wheat is holy.
A whole spent earth
rises mutely over the rim.

VI. The Defeated

My heart still frightened
eases the grasses, lying
in the house of you.

 

YOU CAN KNOW
WHERE THE BOMBS FELL
After Flin van Hemmen

Right up
against a sound
of singing 

Stilling awoken spaces

I can remember

All things
intact

The final creak of it

A sadness

Ghosts

Our dissatis-
faction

The snow static

Elusive
climbs

Led down through
this hope
forever

We did
so simply

Peddle
for all our sins

Your coming-
backness
haunts us sore

Flirtations

Our
bodies in limbo

Collect in
canyons

Holes in stumps
& on trails to
salvation
where mushrooms grow

& the child laughs

& the baby
moves

The scavenger

Floats over
everything
now

When you leaf through
paper
dolls

Each bears
witness a message

 

TOXIN

 

I.

Trauma,

that blindness, that

lavender metal,

 

innocence

crouched like a wound

and its hollowed-out

 

double,

everthinking

mindbramblestorm.

 

Look, the way it

holds still.

 

II.

Remittal,

coin of the unexplored,

you fell upon a mute,

immobile mouth.

 

The glass erupted,

finger-grazed,

of a dime

of darkness.

 

III.

How can this leaf

belong to you, mother,

when all the morning sigils

moneychoke

that birthindebtedness;

when the airthorn

tore your voice.

 

IV.

Defenseless,

you

 

carve into

silence

 

the root-

taken

husk,

your

 

king-under

threat,

 

fall-silent.

 

 

A BLACK BOX

FOR THE HOLY GHOST

In memoriam Henry Grimes

 

Abusing the bass

in recalling the

tree

 

Wanting for

space & crowding

the voice with nothing

 

This specific

image threaded into

assumption

 

Maria

Maria

Maria

 

Uncontained testing

certain freedom

 

Doing

nothing & staying

ahead of anything

 

Playing the violin

 

Folk painting

of a dog

 

Who passed away

 

Silence

the way

out of sound

 

& sound

the way out

 

Someone made a shrine

 

The temple torn

down around it stands

for the midnight cipher

 

Somehow some-

where standing in the way of it

we have to move

 

& standing

 

In the way

we grow drunk

& tired

 

Having grown tired

we drink

 

There’s something in the way

 

You’re not the only mother

in town

 

Not the only

lady

 

Not

the only child

 

Who’s got his own