Noose and Hook

told my student Kimber Lester

51 I told my student Kimber Lester if you cannot actually write a poem at least write a sentence to tell me why in the eighth stanza of this text the image of a bloody dagger hangs before me? My own poem was lost on the plane from Finland. Under the hungry coliseum of the night sky where the souls of the martyred stars are burning, in the terminal at Helsinki lies the poem I had told myself to unpack as so many times I have told you, my students, Caleb the Morose, Jennifer whose face is that of a wall guarding a moat, whose face is that of the guard on the wall of the moat, whose walled face stands guard over the moat guarding your heart, & Kimber whose flesh—as by lions the flesh of early martyrs—is mauled by specialized increments of scarification so that you are a cloud floating inside the rosy burns, the sunsets edged & licked by the red fires of your face on which you write with torches, with tongs. Yes, to you all have I said— emmanuel noose i-62.indd 51 1/4/10 4:32 PM 52 Consider that 1 in this image of the bloody dagger 2 buried in this hard dark scab of line 3 in this densely botched moment of your personal life 4 which has gathered its sense & meaning unto itself like a scar 5 your life has gotten itself swallowed in an obscurity as deep as the locked suitcase. Perhaps you could “unpack it.” Now it is too late. You are gone into your lives, Caleb the Morose, Jennifer the Moat, Kimber smoking beneath the poured lavas of new scars, & somewhere in that dark airport lies my poem in which the electricity gives out & my husband & I lighting ourselves with the pale weeping of candles & a heretical manner of copulation set the duvet on fire, lies the obscure room & my inexplicable weeping. Kimber, Caleb, Jennifer, my small vista of gall, luckily looking out at you I can recall Finland: like black leather that endless supple supply of night sky, the stars twinkling like studs in pierced— Vagueness is personal, writes Rae Armentrout. So, perhaps it is best, after all, that I not stand before you & that you & I not stand before each other clearly revealed. If we had not lost everything we would be violated, & undisguised, & explicable. emmanuel noose i-62.indd 52 1/4/10 4:32 PM ...