Silk
Anne Germanacos
Wean oneself?
Be weaned?
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Generator on.
Fire. Tea.
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John Cage says: Framed, any group of sounds can become music.
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(Frame a life, make it art?)
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(The body, a frame? The body: framed!)
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Galvanize your warriors, send out the fleets!
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Slim it trim.
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(Stopping yourself before you start?)
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(Who’s the boss here?)
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Define war.
Define home!
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Killing this form—it goes under when I do.
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Mourning something different now—a little ahead of the game.
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Take the hours as they come?
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Another day or two: that drawer is empty.
The candy’s gone.
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Dwelling in silence like a hunter in the snow.
(no orange vest)
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Not treacherous wind but enough to push the gulls, squawking, and hair in your eyes.
Sometimes you’re scenic.
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I know no mother is scrambling eggs much less pouring coffee.
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Don’t forget compassion.
And: a baby, suckling.
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(weaned?)
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A model, posing. What would she talk about between the poses?
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Paid your dues, made your gift, bestowed it.
You’ve done time.
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Think a little: what starts with a trickle may end with a flood.
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Always looking to catch a bird on the wing.
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an abundance of blind sculptors
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Divying spoils: who’s to say they’re yours?
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What do you do with rust? (Better rust than mold.)
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Ritual? Or play?
She sweeps up at the end of each session.
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How we cheer each other on, our own audience, our favorite collaborators.
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Finally turned the corner between Apollonian and Dionysian? Is that what all the fuss is about?
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You’ve put it on display. You’ve marked it neon.
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I asked: Apollo or Dionysus?
He was in a hurry, didn’t say.
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Icing my knee. (Frosting it?)
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Winter solstice, lunar eclipse.
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An epic of tiny, radiant parts.
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The triumph of light—almost an optimism.
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Like Lazarus, you die and rise several times each day.
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They were entering the war with cynicism.
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Read? Shoot? Study? Kill?
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Something caught in her throat as she made the announcement.
That catch brought tears; I swallowed too many times.
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A child holding itself in a gesture of embrace.
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Children may be offered a plethora of mothers—some good, some not.
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Which gods do you serve?
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Passed close enough to catch a glimpse: pure gold glint!
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Forget about happiness?
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In some sense, you’ve been suffering from penis envy your whole life.
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Telling a bully exactly what he is. The shock on his face, the way it may crumple.
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Some days, simply home free.
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The greater the climax, the scarier the fall?
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A penis so pliant it can go anywhere.
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A habit of mind, your contract with the universe.
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(an endless sip, a nip)
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Setting down lost worlds (installations, miniatures):
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That Troy.
Flames leap, smoke colors the air.
Look out over the ramparts past townhouses and condos, sublets and garages.
You’re on your own in this burning city.
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A miracle that it doesn’t come undone.
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You will eventually be made to mourn the loss.
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Make a space: the characters pour in.
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What kind of children have we raised?
What kind of citizens?
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This is the heart. Always there or only when sought?
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It’s time to move out: a whole world both you and not you.
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She promised that she would try to go back to the way she had been before, herself.
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He swims with especially brisk strokes to get over the life-and-deathness of her.
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Quarter-to-three may sometimes seem like quarter-to-five.
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A cliff you know you have to jump off. An ocean you need to dive into. (A picture frame you must crack?)
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How does one dodge knowledge without unknowing oneself?
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The pre-conscious is a dream that hasn’t yet been dreamt?
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Seeing yourself as a hero, someone in a film.
The spark that fires a revolution!
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Alzheimer’s: catalyst?
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We want to know less, but decisively.
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Who hasn’t been playfully buried in sand, head a little raised on a sandy pillow?
Whose siblings haven’t taken advantage, if not directly kicking then inadvertently flicking?
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Eyes peeled.
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It may be entirely hormonal.
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Moving toward some assumption of being rather than being under the fearful impression that it will forever dart away.
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Sometimes, you come back to the moment: boisterous!
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Our future routed?
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Her son arrived, she felt like a mother.
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Need to become your own permission slip?
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He sleeps, she worries.
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One’s analyst may appear to have the final say, but you do, really.
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(A little worried about everything left on the cutting room floor.)
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Sometimes, the only one here.
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Stillness—the last frontier?
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Pick up any number of points on a line, weave through.
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Sometimes so sunk inside yourself, you’re practically gone.
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combine uncombineables
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Nervous breakdown or just the beginning of another grief?
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No hand-holding, no embrace.
Only: goodbye.
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What was that? A Helen, an empty robe, a mournful tune.
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She asked for a worm; he handed her an apple.
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No more skated hearts.
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Punishment for the excitement of worthy parts?
Punishment for paying but not paying your dues?
For not truly walking through any valleys of death?
You paid and got and had.
(being had)
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This clock ticks in the only way it can.
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Dumb, like wood.
But look at it flame!
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She said: You’re my scapegoat.
He said: Your farmakos, in ancient times, a much younger boy.
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Your bisexuality: alive and well.
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Navigating a separation, possiby less than gracefully.
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(Some part will emerge.)
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The timer pings just as the tears drop.
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It passes—backward and forward and forward again.
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First position—the feet are parallel?
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Enchanted by the slim white crescent at the tops of your nails.
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The difference between icing and frosting? Neither is cold.
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Compression:
You can list the things you’re worried about, you can list your fears.
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The gamble? Even two words, well placed, may hold you.
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In Turkish, insan means human. Is it human to be insane, from time to time?
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Times when anyone can use a squirt of magic.
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Just a fast-beating heart, no logic to take you home.
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The logic of this then that then this then that: brutal.
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He sleeps, she turns on her side, touches him. Tears flow.
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There’s an angry, petulant type in the war.
And a child playing with a toy soldier.
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Clay may shatter. Plastic lives forever.
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That’s our fate.
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An Ariadne sits in a corner, pops one worm and then another, hoping for silk.
Anne Germanacos' work has appeared in over seventy literary journals and anthologies. Her collection of short stories, In the Time of the Girls, was published by BOA Editions in 2010. She and her husband live in San Francisco and on Crete. www.annegermanacos.com
