Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics Across North America

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Laura Mullen | 195 Ferns from a florist’s arrangement stuck out, and a glass Bottle. If I was ready to really look through it I bet I could Tell you a lot about that person, I bet I could learn a lot (But not as much as someone learned, whoever it was, hungry, Who went through the garbage outside and found and ate the stale Remains of my birthday cake, leaving behind the torn-open, empty box, not As much as that . . .). The need to eat comes under the heading of money, The need to know comes under the heading of sex. Are you reading this To find out something? Did you find it out? It’s been on the market for years, But now that the building’s been sold and they’re making improvements Those empty apartments must be worth a lot, or they ought to Be able to ask a lot, to get a lot for those apartments Whose doors swing open on brightly lit nothing to the curious touch. Even in this section of the city the new disease has emptied out. 35 V Is this turning all too easily, too swiftly into Language? A man keeps stepping out From behind a banyan tree Saying “Believe It or not . . . . “ Stopping. Starting over again. Stopping. Of course there’s a camera. Of course there’s a cameraMan making it into A movie, or trying: stopping 196 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century The speaker from stepping out Of the frame, sending him back to “Believe . . . “ And the tree, And the moving away from the tree. What does the tree feel? What does the camera Think about this? It’s a fund-raising movie, “Believe It or not, last year we were ranked in . . .”— You don’t want to hear this. I got out Of there fast. “And so”: the scene’s stopped. Incongruous, in a suit and a tie—stopped again Mid-gesture, emphatic, between the tree’s Green and the lawn’s—there’s some guy walking out Of a day in Spring (making a special pitch to the camera’s Potentially vast and yet intimate audience) and into Something like timelessness. It’s a matter of belief. Or beliefs? That banyan’s true, but hard to believe In, in that dense cluster of trunks it hasn’t stopped Adding all those very slightly differing versions onto, Like a news feed: tree, tree, tree, et cetera— A dark mass of leaves above the whole business—the camera Keeps running. Don’t worry, we can edit it out. I got out and I didn’t get out . . . : Like him I was getting paid to act like I believed In what I was selling, only language was the camera (So I was both of them) I couldn’t stop—I couldn’t stop This I, I, I—turning into the tree Now (do you believe that?), turning into Something outside, stopped . . . . Which goes on soliciting belief. For how long? O Tree, O Camera. Just a couple of seconds turning into ...