Circles Where the Head Should Be

A Correlated History of Synchronicity

66 A Correlated History of Synchronicity According to those who say they see it, the face, with deepset eyes, beard, and crown of thorns, is on a billboard advertising Pizza Hut spaghetti. —The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN It’s happening everywhere, this surely not… crop circles, sages, spacemen, crooked fruit, recurring phrases, yetis, Nessies, Elvis. From Nashville’s famous “Nun Bun” (folded dough slathered with raisin glaze that somehow favors Mother Teresa) to the Jesus weeping on oaks in Natchitoches, we’ve seen it all, bewildered witness to our own desires. We nurse a need for order, patterns, webs of information, perfect gyres, The Law of Truly Large Numbers, and could we trace time back to our obscene gelatinous start, perhaps we’d find the missing helices. But that won’t stop the Georgia divorcée who, with the poise of bygone martyrs, swore to god and Channel Five her truth appeared in marinara eyes. And that won’t stop the motorists who heard the news and followed, cocksure they’d prove her right, the demipilgrims with their hymns and glowing votives, asking “Here?” “Or here?” or me, my grandma three weeks gone, the way I reeled through Dublin’s side streets, trailing her thick familiar scent of Estée Lauder, compelled to chase its owner up the glazed cathedral steps, as if I’d find her there, as if there is a method to the nothing behind our opened doors, our rolled-back stones. 67 Someone was vacuuming the Lady Chapel, and so I waited in a vacant pew, hoping, with patience, ordinary shapes would rise like dust above the slope of light, and I kept waiting. This was years ago, but I’m no wiser for the time, alone with nervous systems, threads unraveling inside a room I haven’t left all day despite the city going dark behind my window in this multi-storied complex, curator of coincidence, high priestess of sense in absentia—perplexed to recognize my own face glossed across the passing world. 68 Praise for Previous Winners of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry Stray Home, by Amy M. Clark: Two poems from Stray Home were selected by Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion and of The Writer’s Almanac to be included in The Writer’s Almanac, broadcast May 28 and 29, 2010. “Stray Home is a great read. The poetic form found in its pages never feels forced or full of clichés. Whether you are a fan of formal verse or just like to ‘dabble,’ Stray Home is a collection to pick up.”—Good Reads Ohio Violence, by Alison Stine: “In the mind, Ohio and violence may not be words immediately paired—pastoral cornfields, football fields, and deer versus the blood and splintered bone of a fight or a death. Yet Ohio Violence achieves that balance of the smooth and vivid simmer of images and the losses that mount in Alison Stine’s collection.”—Mid-American Review “Shot through with a keen resolve, Ohio Violence is an arresting, despairing book that alternately stuns and seduces.”—Rain Taxi “One comes away from Ohio Violence newly impressed with the contingency and instability of the hazardous universe that is our home; and impressed, as well, with the ability of these stark, memorable poems to distill that universe into language and to make of it a sad and haunting song.”—Troy Jollimore, Galatea Resurrects #13 Mister Martini, by Richard Carr: “This is a truly original book. There’s nothing extra: sharp and clear and astonishing. Viva!”—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Fuel, judge The Next Settlement, by Michael Robins: “Michael Robins’ prismatic poems open windows, then close them, so we’re always getting glimpses of light that suggest a larger world. With never a syllable to spare, these poems are beautiful and haunting. I know of nothing like them.”—James Tate, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry “The Next Settlement is a finely honed, resonant collection of poems, sharp and vivid in language, uncompromising in judgment. The voice in this book is unsparing, often distressed, and involved in a world which is intrusive, violent, and deeply deceitful, where honesty 69 and compassion are sought for in vain, and refuges for the mind are rare.”—Anne Winters, author of The Key to the City, judge re-entry, by Michael White: “Michael White’s third volume does what all good poetry...