What Happened
By Eleanor Stanford
What Happened
The summer when words left me,
I was trying to learn a new alphabet. I was studying
catastrophe theory. We went to a backyard
soiree. I grew tired of the flat affect,
the postmodern gloom. The accordion player
from Moldova unfolded the bellows in pale
bloom. I decided I would start believing in
something. It was the summer with a dark lake
at its center. We lay on our backs on the
road and looked up at the stars.
Panpsychism was coming back
into vogue. What happened was mostly
in my head. I was watering the garden,
talking to Jessica about a strange entanglement
with her therapist. We were always talking
about entanglements. We were very
entangled. My lover returned from
Istanbul with a beautiful gift–a single
calligraphed letter that meant the beginning
and the end are one. The bed became a creek, then
changed its mind again. The next thing I knew
I was driving home toward a thunderstorm,
the sky cloven, clawed, split open.
This morning I was walking in the rain
and talking to my son who lives on an island,
as I once lived on an island.
We were each walking around our separate
islands, talking. In this way,
all stories are circular.
One minute you’re going to Mexico
for a facelift, my brother says, the next
you’re being killed by the Sinaloa Cartel.
I remember being young and studying all night.
I remember dancing a funaná in the dark
on the edge of a volcano.
My son tells me he can understand
the language, but when he tries to speak
the words don’t appear.
One minute you’re getting married
in a cheap polyester slip dress
and a crown of thorns. The next your ex
is shacked up with a twenty-six-year old
who works at Urban Outfitters.
Look at my other son, washing the dishes
listening to Roberta Flack, his curls bobbing.
It’s a lie. I never studied all night.
I wish the world would just end already,
my lover says, watering his plants.
The best way to avoid something
is to point out how the other person is avoiding it.
This lover and I can spend hours arguing
about who is being avoidant.
In this way, all stories are circular.
My other lover, the Turkish mathematician,
orders handmade stockings from Paris.
I ask him to do unspeakable things to me.
He does them with such care, the unspeakable things.
As if God stood in need of other beings.
You will notice, he says, I did not invite you
to move in with me. I could say something here
about the wet daffodils, bowing their heads.
I could remember my sons when they were small,
pretending to be baby squirrels.
In this way, too, all stories are circular.
My other brother has a secret band
with our third brother who lives in a different city.
I want to write the songs, this brother says,
but be invisible.
Eleanor Stanford is the author of three books of poetry, The Imaginal Marriage, Bartram's Garden, and The Book of Sleep, all from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Iowa Review, and many others.
She has received an NEA fellowship, and was a Fulbright fellow to Brazil, where she researched and wrote about traditional midwifery in rural Bahia.
She lives in the Philadelphia area.
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