Nachträglichkeit—after Kaja Silverman
- Nachträglichkeit—after Kaja Silverman
On having slashed myself from throat to instepin one unbroken line,
I suppose it was a reenactment, Freud's Nachträglichkeit:the second act. The past presses so hard
on the present, the present is badly bruised,blood brims under the skin.
That was the situation I was in. Wearing a jacket of bloodfrom an earlier crime,
which was also mine. A curving zipper with misalignedteeth, open to show red lipstick,
meat. And a stage smile, have a seat! Normally I'm muchmore careful, naturally something
like this would only ever happen in a dream,but even dreams have their dreams
of finding their dreamer awake, silent within earshot,carving knife in hand. [End Page 29]
Did you know that anguish thins the blood and thickensthe vessel? It was like cutting
a rare steak. A minotaur, glittering with rubiesand pink candles. My hands hung
like electrical wires off a building on the edge of collapse,every one of my gestures symbolic,
ruined of magic. For there is no miraculous beast,and there never was, standing
on the golden field of frozen honey clover,each leaf strong enough to bend
under everything's weight. Strong because it bends.Because it has already been crushed,
but its cells know that blight, one massive cut,will slit each tiny skin surgically
in order to save the field from itself. I cannot sufferthe same fate twice, force my own hand
or stay it. Can't repeat or unrepeat. This finitudeis infinite and infinitely expanding. [End Page 30]
Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of two poetry collections, Interior with Sudden Joy and Human Dark with Sugar, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critic's Circle Award and winner of the 2007 James Laughlin Award. A third collection is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Conjunctions, McSweeney's, the Nation, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is currently an assistant professor of English in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing program at Rutgers University, and poetry editor of Tin House magazine.
