What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks — empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.
So, for myself, random tips and lists that aren’t anchored to solving a real-world problem for a smart but flawed adult with a mind are dead to me.
1.
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
I knew very well I could not
Praise him.
I cast for comfort I can no more get.
I set it in a blaze.
You did not come.
2.
Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
The heavy trouble, the bewildering care,
The light that loses, the night that wins—
Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
Passing away, said my God, passing away
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Missing me one place search another.
Closer yet I approach you,
The little wheel moved by the Grace of God.
3.
When the stars begin to fall—
O weary time whose stars are few—
Across the barren azure pass to God,
And bathe there in God’s sight,
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
Note: “Or I Guess It Is the Handkerchief of the Lord” is a cento.
Shannon Holman, New York, 2001
Gestures
for Jan Holman
(July 16, 1965 – February 18, 1989)
1.
Practice doesn’t make perfect.
I wash my bowls, lie in the bed I make.
Sit up again, trying like hell
to make my back straight.
Spinning around and around,
trying to catch a monkey.
If only I could remember
the proper mudra, the one for mercy.
I admit I am still grieving.
2.
I looked for clues of you in pictures of our childhood,
beckoned you into my dreams, but you never came.
I waited at the graveyard for anything to happen,
damned you and God both, trying to get a rise.
I learned the semaphore alphabet and waved out to sea,
emptied every bottle that bobbed my way.
I am still waiting for an answer,
a sign, or a secret password.
I admit I am still a believer: sucker.
3.
Our father was drilling offshore when the call came.
Dolphins followed him through the thick Gulf water.
When the hard land started, seagulls took over,
flying in the shape of spades. He called your name.
These are useless gestures. Bag of bones,
I’ll see you when I see you.
Rotten, stinking, broken,
your hair and fingernails still growing.
I admit I am still living.
Shannon Holman, Oberlin, Ohio, 1993
The Shape of That Emptiness
How the road looked that night, we won’t know that,
if the sky was still black, or gray, or bluish-gray,
or if the light was starting up, the birds.
We won’t know what was said in the car,
if the radio was on, what station, how loud.
Or where you and Roger thought you were off to,
out past town, so late, so fast, not toward your home
or anyone’s home we knew. I’m stalling.
Near four. You swerved,
split the car on a telephone pole, were killed.
He was thrown clear.
Maybe a squirrel in the road, maybe a slick patch.
Or else you argued, he grabbed the wheel.
For a long time, because he lived,
it seemed important to think that.
Look: you were drunk. It was your fault.
I can say that.
*
I’m the first to enter your apartment;
I want to keep your secrets.
And catch your ghost? What I get
is this: imprint of your body
in the sheet’s hollows,
half-empty mug of coffee,
shopping list, unfinished letter,
smell of your skin on a red sweater.
*
At the viewing, I admire the parlor’s furniture.
On the sofa, a team of hounds is running.
Flags wave gaily. Our mother says,
you made my child a wax-doll.
I’m given warning: the process
of reconstruction, so delicate,
touching is forbidden. Even a finger—
they tell me—could spark the crumbling,
the collapse of all their efforts. We might have urges—
they speak so gently—we will resist them.
*
So cinematic, those first days.
Your life’s another story. Here’s all I remember: us driving
back from a party on the bayou, REO Speedwagon on the radio,
daquiris sweating between our legs (I try to call up your face,
but your long hair’s always in the way). And your arms,
currents of muscle under your skin.
And also, I’ve got an image of the last time I ever saw you,
but it’s just your legs below the knee, and the sound of the vacuum.
*
I was 17; you were 23. It’s been
eleven years: I’m older
than you were, than you will be.
Our brother has children, cats & dogs,
quail, even a raccoon—all the pieces of a life, and then some.
Our parents moved up North; their house now
has no doorbell to trigger Mom’s nightmares.
Dad loves the snow—it covers everything.
I guess you could say
we’re happy. Is that okay?
Is this what I’m supposed to do, give the news?
All’s well at Camp Earth. Send money.
My friend Laura’s brother died suddenly.
She makes these sculptures, large rocks with flour
dropped over them; and then the rocks are
carefully taken away, so that what’s left
is just the shape of that emptiness.
That’s what I wanted
when the house
was full of people
and ridiculous hams and casseroles,
pictures of you everywhere.
I turned them over,
went out to walk the dog.
The world looked
exactly the same
without you.
Shannon Holman, New York, 2000