for what the same ignites: poems by Linda E. Chown

For Alison Krause

In her honor, she was killed at Kent State May 4, 1970

The girl who placed the stem in a gun
Said I’m hit
And all the world burst
Into blood
As the bullet burrowed
And buried its cold metal
Thrust in living lungs.
And the world’s TVs centered
The world’s eye on
The rough shed minuet of death
On a campus lawn.
And later one said
What they said
With feeling,
Or built flimsy backgrounds
And gasped flatly.
But the fact remains
And gives more body to your name:
The moment perceiving
The violation of skin,
The way the invisible I is denied
And the heroic future
Disappears in an instant
Locking self in an eggshell
And everything you love
Darkened.

Virginia Woolf Without Herself

It was to be without herself.
Not in the old-fashioned sense
It was to be of fins and pageants.
Feasts and banquets of nameless
villagers and fins afar, swooping
up and down, round and round,
her lust for the journey,
the getting there without time
beyond the horizon in this new
drama. Not to write to name what
there was but to find
what she was without her.

Hefting

Hefting is not a heavy thing
to do. It comes as it goes.
It is how to wed the shadows.
Not with heavy scales
But with xrays of mind sight,
“the brain” she presumed “wider than the sky.”
Oh you and I, We can wed,
hefting in our sleep,
mating the radii

without a signified in my heart

words words words
as when harmonicas
and Bo Jangles and harpsichords
as when my life goes down
as when flowers pop
as when words fail me
as when it’s all translation
as when honeysuckle isn’t
honey and words don’t say
as when signifiers fall away

for what the same ignites

it’s the same white cat
before lunch it’s the same
under trees the shadows
bark in the ravine without
food it’s the same hunger
for what the same ignites:
a fin up high in open space,
a lasting outlandishness