Horsemanship
the policeman places
a hand on my knee
& like that the wind
swerves against the yew hedge
to erase its arrangement of berries
& knocks the gateless school & whines
but none come down to us
it, his hand, it pulls me out
like a drawer to the end
of its runners
& says here she is
please says the policeman
keep your legs nice
for the man in your future
as if the future is a wind harp
strung in the yew
waiting to strike up
a nice biting tune—
it, his hand, an indication
of what the diligent mind attempts
to rake into a pile, away, to the tar yard
to the school, to the instants
shifting their weight
the instants rustling with their great jaws
behind the hedge
the instants growing harnesses to hold
themselves, steel fittings with
a dazzling leather belt
look—it’s that human
feeling, our old blood’s name
tugging with its muscled neck
making us suspect—
no, know—that whatever we touch
becomes our own
creature
You go to my head
Knock, knock. Who’s there.
Can you imagine. Can you imagine who.
Can you imagine how my body ends
here at my skin.
Myself, I’m nothing I know
how to look at, so come,
let me feel my own voice in your ear—
your ear like an enigma machine
for whom language means nothing,
as though laid in a wooden jacket,
with little rubber rotors rachet-
ing down on pins and contacts in
sawtoothed clicks, my breaths exiting
the neat automata of my lungs
to meet the keys. Look at me,
clacking at you with my tongue
as if you’re a stupid animal,
not a man whose voice I can’t remember—
Knock, knock. Who’s there.
Who’s there. Who’s there who.
Who’s there who’s there who’s there who—
And now my mind is tired
of my mind—my enigma machine
whirrs me nightly into stupors,
its ghost current flowing
into twenty-six glow-lamps
to light the sequence of all
my love and savageries,
outputs I transcribe here nightly
onto narrow paper ribbons.
This is the one thing I can do.
If I turn, small in the warped window,
to the tree’s reach, I will see
the buckeyes detaching themselves
from their branch-ribbons with
little death knocks—and nightly,
and their half-hewn faces will be
animal in their aspirations—
Knock, knock. Who’s there.
Of course, no one. Of course, no one who.
Of course, no one who’d speak to the living,
when they say only
how could you do this to me? This poem
is like trying on a pair of rotten shoes
and walking. I am trying to send you
anything but silence:
the sounds of lying, of sawtoothed clicks
and living-room panes ringing with knocks
of buckeyes. The sounds will inhabit no room
in your ghost ear I can feel myself
speaking into even now—oh, to be
good for you—make it good—for who—
Alison Stagner is the author of The Thing that Brought the Shadow Here (BOAAT Press, 2019), which was selected by Nick Flynn as the winner of the 2018 BOAAT Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Journal, Mid-American Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award (2016). A graduate of the University of Washington’s M.F.A. in Poetry program, she lives in Seattle with her family.