< >
chase berggrun
CHAPTER VI
This is the little river
This is the harbour where
the graves stretch out into the sea
This is a bell in bad weather
This is a funny old face
all gnarled and twisted
a sailor at sea
tellin’ lies
hurrying home
*
I was looking sweetly pretty
I think they all fell in love with my ghost
Dizzy women invented tombstones
Look here all around you
see the stranger murdered by young eyes
drowned in the light of the aurora borealis
I said
Everybody in the place knows
that glorious resurrection is a pack of lies
He said
My pretty lass
I was just a little heart-sick
I am sad
I see scattered all over the town
a black clatter of waltz
*
I sometimes imagine myself
a very sad spider
always growing then
partially diminished
progressing and undeveloped
I was spreading out again
had been very sick
Sleep buzzing about my brain
I shall have to invent a new life
To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended
*
I am anxious
I am unhappy
uneasy
in sleep I walk along the edges of cliffs then suddenly fall over
sympathise with the weather
so perpetually nervous
I pray it will get easier I pray for patience
To-day is a grey
grey
grey
grey
sunburst tumbling in
over the sandy mist
The sea sounds like some dark figure making straight for me
I’m afraid
the dead
remember
afraid of dyin’
I don’t want to die
I can’t refuse to answer death
but it’s in the sea
that sore sad heart
There’s something in that wind
that sounds and looks and tastes and smells
like silence
The queerest storm
coming
We’ll hear more of her before tomorrow
CHAPTER VII
The body of the storm had
a sultry heat and a foreign foolhardiness
Her undulating swell painted
the distinct harmony of midnight
on the level sands
Strong men clung with ghostly effort
to their trembling experiments
The safety of the moment
was swept away
by her impossible speed
She was sea-fog
a mass of dank mist the organ of her shudder
her corpse swung to and fro
unsteered by the hand of a man
Crashing down on the eastern side
of some sudden emotion
*
On the pier
a small dead seaman was loudly asserting
his details into the storm
She took all men
into blue water cum grano
*
We finished fresh
Dawn entered Bosphorus
dissatisfied but steady
Something
struck
something
awestruck
A rain-storm to-day began to scowl
There will be some trouble the men will do some violence
A maelstrom a tempest
another tragedy
Only God can
guide us in the fog and God
seems to have deserted us
*
It is nearly all over now
A raging
blanket of despair
a secret sea
had got rid of the men
one by one
God help these horrors
which the sunrise
cannot pierce
I dared not go to die
my strength begins to fail
I am growing weaker
*
The storm was sharp
she dressed herself in her intention
in sunbright foam like snow
she was restless at night
she is quite odd she will admit
she had a look
that men said made them shudder
She feels influences more acutely than other people
She was
angry howling harshly
in a fury eyes
savage hairs
bristling
on the war-path agonized super-sensitive
The whole agglomeration of things
furious and now in terror
will all afford
material for her dreams
Chapter XIX
This whole story is put together
in such a way that you know more than I do
but in a dreamy kind of way
so mixed up and earnest
wild sad and spiritual
At certain times
I tried to play with
the image conveyed
in the idea of our bodies
I could not get away from the feeling
that the feeling was common to us all
*
I noticed that every sound and every shadow
was heavy with tattered weight
time-yellowed maps of an idea’s direction led the way
my existence was ruined and stagnant
How shall I describe
the corrupt and ordinary circumstances of my heart
no corners no doors no aperture of any kind
no hiding-place for imagination’s phosphorescence
Unconsciously I disturbed a snarled evil in the atmosphere
dread seemed to slip from its untouched uneasiness
summer was quickening in the key of fear
sweet mother’s other monster has gone elsewhere
*
Some pain is too great a strain
for a woman to bear to conceal
from a world that will not even recognize her
that will simplify and reason
call it
false delusion
He said that my memory is a mental disease
I answered I wish you would take your theories somewhere else
he sat indifferent to me
This world is no place for a woman in touch with her distress
drawn further into the fool wishes of men
sad and low-spirited
simply because they told her to be
Crying again I must hide it
put a bold face on I suppose it is one of the lessons
that women have to learn
*
I can remember
a queer silence stirring
Death a thin streak of slowness
across my thoughts
creeping over me
*
The man was loud though I could not distinguish a word
he pulled my clothes over my head he was bending over me
and thought I was asleep I was powerless
The heavy gaslight had grown thicker
It occurred to me
all his tricks and convenient smoke thicker and thicker
Things began to whirl through my brain
and through it all came words through the fog
momentary mental wandering reality dream imagination
To unseat reason
fear would become woven into fear
to hurt me
tire me
I spent all yesterday trying to brighten
for I forgot how to
*
He knew that if I was to begin to flirt with power
I might want it
Chapter XX
I was not in a condition to prove much
hieroglyphical half-obliterated
by booze and booze the night before
I am tired and pale
I kept a broken burden reticent
My dirty daily tasks misled me
I found difficulty in
discovering the right track
but had a vague idea a slender clue
of who to ask
I had to pay for information
*
A heavy phrase thrilled through me
*
Having paid for information I walked westward
beyond the framework still remaining
I would have given a good deal to gain access to dusk
autumn was closing in on me
I required a friend
not an enemy
I made a gallant effort to be cheerful
My task seems somehow
to have become repugnant to me
I had to get abreast of my own doubt
I had to get agency and command over an ineffably terrestrial life
*
Through the cloudiness of insanity
came
an accurate knowledge of light and energy
came
inspiration and determined confidence
He would distract my attention with ridiculous nonsense
or distract me with
another homicidal fit
I cannot think clearly when my body is confined
and this story is haunted by
his lethargic buzz and fire
The only important observation was
that men
cannot be trusted
they are not
useful
*
I seem at last to be on track
to the coming destruction
the monster
his face on the floor
all covered in blood
Chase Berggrun is a genderqueer/non-binary poet and the author of Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, winner of the 2012 jubilat Chapbook Contest, and their work has been published or is forthcoming in Prelude, inter|rupture, Apogee, Cosmonauts Avenue, Cutbank, BOAAT, Beloit Poetry Journal, the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Under 25, and elsewhere. They are Poetry Editor at Washington Square Review and Swarm, and an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.