Laynie Browne
from “Practice”
“Where else would you start to drown and suddenly be in a new body? Where else would you see the meagerness of your own expression as a corpse? Where else might you be a torso, beating at your own window” —Alice Notley
“Kierkegaard says knowledge proceeds every act but surely there are acts that are not proceeded by knowledge. Repetitions pass at the front door from summer to winter. Some slowly. Some quickly. Total strangers. Never saw them before. Can’t picture them now. Umbrellas — strange totalities— upheld, wheeling.” —Lyn Hejinian
“Does absence occupy time, is absence a new moment? Does it have its own sort of presence?” —Norman Fischer
***
And go sometimes with no memory of draughts. You are sitting beside your beloved. How hard will you try? If you miss the turn twice do you try a third time? I am attempting to enter the realm where I refuse to talk silver-headed. So he’ll take a longer
time to instruct his valve usage, his posture and embouchure. How does one spell a lane which unfolds? I don’t dare ask or break a small stitch of silence. She said: this is how I picture you, where one highway bleeds to another.
***
Don’t practice loss, though when it arises chant through the sauntering chasms. There is one photograph I imagine as penultimate, although none of us are still living. Is it weakness to fall into lament as suddenly as the lilt of a voice? There are others I dare not play. And how did I make it past the first year of absence? One sharp exhale, fallen to the ground. What spell is this? It has inhabited me the way I might embody a likeness to a figure in a painting, the way a wood encompasses sight. The way a gown enfolds a body inside this dearth where the softest shadow chafes.
***
A heavy countenance draws curtains across your brow. See even where there is none to see at all. Practice when you are bidden, coming to account for lost beads of water about your throat, stolen topaz. Who you were once in a photograph cannot be relied upon. Recall the encircling, now hidden. Looking out a picture window the landscape is dotted with squirrels turned rigid bronze. The gaze which looks out at you may never have happened as you remember it.
***
You are a rook seen through a poison glass
Asked to unburden yourself from what you call ‘certainty’
Pulled taut an ember spilt from forgiving fingers
A(verse) which cannot be dislodged from memory
Your face will not tarnish
Sewn through copper estuaries
What others exhale does not afford your wake
Do I dare descend the stars?
***
Do not wade out, but imagine the dropped beads of water existing somewhere
You are not tossed as a blanket, woven of crooked stares, divided as a morning darkens, bifurcated as abstraction covets, a rook seen through a poison glass.
***
Practice time as a rivulet you might mention persuasively as dusk passes. The wave escorts your carriage darkening nothing. Stillness requires flame, apothecaries hewn from fallen limbs. Practice waking before the onslaught to gather a name which comforts ash. You know how to form the words between extinguish and incarnate.
***
Practice who you are called to become when inseams gather your lip. One moment you are speaking with fluid ease. Cakes of soap press.
A rifle is mentioned— and a coat— as a fox crosses your path. Your existence is based entirely upon the warmth of the animal running away from you.
***
Where would you go, unleashed from supposition? In smallness of features is examination of one’s own tattered pockets. Suppose you were to pull a face closer instead of staring into distances. Suppose the game were broke and gesture meant nothing. Would you reveal a door of your own making — and shove?
***
Practice the version of yourself you must pardon, the one with fragile lips, drifting into late. Beyond doors, where would you go, unleashed? I searched for the blossom with which to paint the expression for retrieval of cordials. Where loneliness is as vast as unbecoming I could not find the balm. I went out in several frocks, coats, and dresses only to realize that I had left my fingers at home. And all of my necessary sources of red.
***
Practice daring symptoms to disperse
A glade within a fawning compass
Doom as a symptom of barren sunlight
Perch as a practice of alighting a stare
__________
Laynie Browne’s most recent books include: The Ivory Hour (Spuyten Duyvil, 2013), and Roseate, Points of Gold (Dusie, 2011). Recent editorial projects include a collection of writings celebrating the life and work of poet Stacy Doris on http://www.thevolta.org/. She is co-editor of I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press, 2012). Her work appears recently in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Amercian Poetry, Ecopoetry Anthology, Gulf Coast and Puerto Del Sol.
from “Practice”
“Where else would you start to drown and suddenly be in a new body? Where else would you see the meagerness of your own expression as a corpse? Where else might you be a torso, beating at your own window” —Alice Notley
“Kierkegaard says knowledge proceeds every act but surely there are acts that are not proceeded by knowledge. Repetitions pass at the front door from summer to winter. Some slowly. Some quickly. Total strangers. Never saw them before. Can’t picture them now. Umbrellas — strange totalities— upheld, wheeling.” —Lyn Hejinian
“Does absence occupy time, is absence a new moment? Does it have its own sort of presence?” —Norman Fischer
***
And go sometimes with no memory of draughts. You are sitting beside your beloved. How hard will you try? If you miss the turn twice do you try a third time? I am attempting to enter the realm where I refuse to talk silver-headed. So he’ll take a longer
time to instruct his valve usage, his posture and embouchure. How does one spell a lane which unfolds? I don’t dare ask or break a small stitch of silence. She said: this is how I picture you, where one highway bleeds to another.
***
Don’t practice loss, though when it arises chant through the sauntering chasms. There is one photograph I imagine as penultimate, although none of us are still living. Is it weakness to fall into lament as suddenly as the lilt of a voice? There are others I dare not play. And how did I make it past the first year of absence? One sharp exhale, fallen to the ground. What spell is this? It has inhabited me the way I might embody a likeness to a figure in a painting, the way a wood encompasses sight. The way a gown enfolds a body inside this dearth where the softest shadow chafes.
***
A heavy countenance draws curtains across your brow. See even where there is none to see at all. Practice when you are bidden, coming to account for lost beads of water about your throat, stolen topaz. Who you were once in a photograph cannot be relied upon. Recall the encircling, now hidden. Looking out a picture window the landscape is dotted with squirrels turned rigid bronze. The gaze which looks out at you may never have happened as you remember it.
***
You are a rook seen through a poison glass
Asked to unburden yourself from what you call ‘certainty’
Pulled taut an ember spilt from forgiving fingers
A(verse) which cannot be dislodged from memory
Your face will not tarnish
Sewn through copper estuaries
What others exhale does not afford your wake
Do I dare descend the stars?
***
Do not wade out, but imagine the dropped beads of water existing somewhere
You are not tossed as a blanket, woven of crooked stares, divided as a morning darkens, bifurcated as abstraction covets, a rook seen through a poison glass.
***
Practice time as a rivulet you might mention persuasively as dusk passes. The wave escorts your carriage darkening nothing. Stillness requires flame, apothecaries hewn from fallen limbs. Practice waking before the onslaught to gather a name which comforts ash. You know how to form the words between extinguish and incarnate.
***
Practice who you are called to become when inseams gather your lip. One moment you are speaking with fluid ease. Cakes of soap press.
A rifle is mentioned— and a coat— as a fox crosses your path. Your existence is based entirely upon the warmth of the animal running away from you.
***
Where would you go, unleashed from supposition? In smallness of features is examination of one’s own tattered pockets. Suppose you were to pull a face closer instead of staring into distances. Suppose the game were broke and gesture meant nothing. Would you reveal a door of your own making — and shove?
***
Practice the version of yourself you must pardon, the one with fragile lips, drifting into late. Beyond doors, where would you go, unleashed? I searched for the blossom with which to paint the expression for retrieval of cordials. Where loneliness is as vast as unbecoming I could not find the balm. I went out in several frocks, coats, and dresses only to realize that I had left my fingers at home. And all of my necessary sources of red.
***
Practice daring symptoms to disperse
A glade within a fawning compass
Doom as a symptom of barren sunlight
Perch as a practice of alighting a stare
__________
Laynie Browne’s most recent books include: The Ivory Hour (Spuyten Duyvil, 2013), and Roseate, Points of Gold (Dusie, 2011). Recent editorial projects include a collection of writings celebrating the life and work of poet Stacy Doris on http://www.thevolta.org/. She is co-editor of I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press, 2012). Her work appears recently in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Amercian Poetry, Ecopoetry Anthology, Gulf Coast and Puerto Del Sol.