Nicole Callihan
Definition, History, Technique
In the dank verdant room, the girl moved around as if she were a woman, as if she were stained glass, as if she were stained, as if the glass had broken, as if she was a woman picking stained glass from the skin of her kneecaps, as if the sting
had come not from a predisposition, not from weakness, nor predilection, nor a leaning towards or away from, nor penchant, nor liking, nor from what her mother had sewn into her heart, was it her heart, less heart, and more
body, or (especially in hunting) to scan (one’s surroundings) with binoculars (as when I searched for X); e.g. “the first day was spent glassing the rolling hills,” how presumably, on the second day, the spied animal would be killed.
Is this a question
For Lyn Hejinian
You want it to hold everything. Mother said, never have more than will fit in the trunk of your car. I take a photograph of the pink Cadillac but do not know what to do with it. The bathing suit bottoms became tiny. I was in Brazil with my stepfather. We ate very large plates of large pieces of meat. I was full. All full. Awful. Bathing became nothing. Nothing became a way to spend the day. Matt said, this is all about waxing the car, I’m ready for the karate. I said, is that a metaphor. The news of the death came after the death but before the announcement of the death. I told C, Wikipedia says she’s still alive. The writing was in present tense. The writing is in present tense. My fondness for the future conditional precedes me. Michele says, grief is not linear. I say, no shit. We are eating truffle fries and drinking Campari with soda. Cruise ships go by one after the other. Michele waves. Why do they depart at sunset. I am more of a sunrise person but any indication that the earth spins is welcome. The axis. If things have not ended badly, the novel says, they have not ended. The novel ends; it is not bad. On the wall, the shadow of palm leaves. In midtown, I visited the psychic. Who’s Michael, she asked. Michael. I am a white woman approximately fifty years of age. In all likelihood, I have known a Michael. Then there was a pandemic. I tried to go back to midtown. I had a drink at the Algonquin. I petted the cat. I wrote what was not a poem in a little book. I wanted it to hold everything. You said, to hold everything you’d have to be very big. I opened my hands. They were empty. When my brother and I did Tae Kwon Do, we would bow to each other and say, Patience, then aim for the gullet. What’s a gullet. A head. Which is not the same as a mind. What is a mind. A salt cellar of paper birds. The windows down. The air in my face. A fate you ask for is not the same as a fate. Is that right. If I stop now, I can fold the towels before our time runs out.
Nicole Callihan’s most recent book, chigger ridge, was selected by Sandra Lim to receive The Tenth Gate Prize (The Word Works 2024). Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023) and the 2019 novella, The Couples. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Winner of an Alma Award, her next book, SLIP, will be published by Saturnalia in 2025.