Ginger Preserves, and: Racy Diorama at the Natural History Museum
Rent from DeepDyve- Ginger Preserves, and: Racy Diorama at the Natural History Museum
Ginger Preserves
In genealogy, a curiosity about linesand what they might makeof us. Where were we
before we were here? My father tells methat my grandmother inventedfor her son the little song
that he came to sing his own daughtera lifetime before she knewherself. And a lifetime before the eve
of her wedding, when she gave her fathera jar of ginger preserves, having inheritedhis taste for ginger, giving it
as if to say:I love where I come from.I know my great-grandmother
burned her skin on the ship from Swedenbecause I live insidethat frailty; on the shore
of this century, I've arrived too lateto meet her boat. I'm waving my hat, its ribbonsflapping like the loose wrists of children. [End Page 148]
Racy Diorama at the Natural History Museum
Just where do we think we come from? Australopithecusunder the gentle waterfall, back arched, nipples out,prelingual, drenched in clear pleasure: in real running water,and the surprise of light over her wet face, her-mind you-synthetic face, pencil-thin streams drawingattention to her hips as if the curves of her bodyhadn't been there before. Breathtaking
context for ersatz flesh. For words like erectwhich the onlookers feel, silently, they are standingvery still. Perhaps in their hands, the warmthof defined shape, another hand, or the brass railingbetween them and 1.2 million
sensuous years. Defined bygenetic change, continental drift, landmass shiftingto kiss the cheek of Asia where mountains rise up. It's an exhibitof the transitive property of touch, primeval, and holy:each rabbi ordained by the hand of a rabbi,omni cellula a cellula, and so,
each feels the source. Yes, this is an argumentfor the sex appeal of language inside us, tonguesin our mouths, the grace of skin as it shapesour lust and longing. Consider attraction:
elemental property of physics, atomic consummation,fusion, unstable gases, the stars whose childrenfinally slither from the water to lick saltsfrom a rock; they cannot yet form [End Page 149]
the word pleasure, although in their cravings,they feel the same heat that eons later, Homo erectuswill unlock from this noun. A power the young feed from,the words into which we emerge: a newborn gulping air.Its hunger for the universe-savage. [End Page 150]
Anna George Meek’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She was a finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the National Poetry Series. Her first book, Acts of Contortion, won the 2002 Brittingham Prize.
