Elisa Gabbert: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Adalena Kavanagh

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Bright & Distant Objects

 

I read a headline that said, “Human hair behind pigeons’ lost toes, study finds.”

I thought it meant that pigeons were growing human hair. . . behind their toes, their lost toes?

I felt sick with fear.

I read a headline that said, “Just thinking about bright objects changes the size of your pupils.”

So how do we know that we’re actually experiencing anything?

How do we know that we’re not just thinking about objects, bright and distant? Concepts? The future?

What do we know of “the actual”?

If you think about greyhounds, your pulse rate goes down.

I am thinking about 16 Psyche, a metallic asteroid so massive it exerts gravitational disturbances on other asteroids.

Some speculate it’s composed of gold and platinum, which would make it worth “quintillion dollars,” or billions of times all the money on Earth.

In these terms everything in the universe is money, a concept humans made up, like emotions.

In the future, objects in the universe will be so far apart that distant civilizations could never discover each other, even theoretically.

They could not even think about each other.

Sometimes, during a period of dread, I momentarily forget the thing I’m dreading, but continue to feel the dread.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to remember something, but the memory never arrives—just the all-consuming feeling of about to.

Or the memory has arrived, but it’s a memory of nothing, with nothing to be about.

The feeling of pure, empty remembering.

If things are just themselves, what do we know of things?

The moon? Clouds? Herons?

Are they decorative objects?

Details on the surface of the actual?

What is a human skull worth—really, what is the cost?

I want to purchase a human skull.

I want to know what happens to desire when you’re dead—should your desires be respected?

You can have your ashes embedded in a record, so your survivors can listen to your death.

You can turn all the carbon in your body into artificial diamonds—you can want that.

My friend the undertaker wanted to be turned into a diamond, then embedded in his own skull, a decorative object.

An undertaker takes the body under, a coincidence of language. (It’s just a euphemism: an undertaking.)

What you wanted, once you’re dead, is the real without feeling.

Desires with no one to want them.

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Elisa Gabbert is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently Normal Distance (out from Soft Skull in September 2022) and The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays (FSG, 2020), a New York Times Editors' Pick and finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared recently in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The Believer.

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                         Jacques-Laurent Agasse (1767- -1849), Nine Greyhounds in a Landscape, oil on canvas, ca. 1807

 

Comments

[Jack Skelley]

Excellent. Thank you Elisa (& Terence). Re: human skulls: I recently read Severed by Julia Kristeva. It got me going for good while on this.

[Bill Nevins]

You wanted blueberry pancakes but were served oatmeal. It wasn't a bad breakfast but not your desire. Then suddenly you died.
Did you taste blueberries that weren't there?
thanks for the non memories and that golden asteroid we won't see glittering

[Michael Whelan]

What a ride! Like an ontological expedition into the mind inside the mind.

[Denise Duhamel]

So good!..

Sometimes, during a period of dread, I momentarily forget the thing I’m dreading, but continue to feel the dread....

Yes indeed, Elisa. Me too.

[lally]

bingo!

[Grace Cavalieri]

Death is a lie as long as there is poetry like this.

[Terence Winch]

Jack: Thanks for the comment.

[Don Berger]

I loved being pulled into this stream and then along and through--such a smart meditation with turns that surprise but maintain the best most thrilling kind of intellectual rigor.

[Clarinda]

Wonderfully thought provoking. Must say tho that thinking about greyhounds makes me feel thin and nervous.

[Eileen Reich]

Great poem!

[Geoffrey Himes]

Great poem, but how did that human hair get stuck beneath the pigeons' toes? Are barbers selling to the black market? Are pigeons operating that market, hoarding my split ends between their talons? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Stacey]

"Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to remember something, but the memory never arrives—just the all-consuming feeling of about to." I thought I was the only one who had this experience. Terrific poem. Great choice, one again, Terence.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Stacey.

[Doug Pell]

Really great poem. But all I remember is what it felt like.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Pretty terrific. Lump i my throat. Thanks.

[David Schloss]

Tracings of a very interesting meditative mind. Thank you.
Pigeon Toed