Back to 2008 Ghazals
Back to Special Summer Issue index
Home Page | 2008 Ghazals | 2007 Ghazals | Prose | Links | Information | Email | Archives
Event of oneself, ongoing primordial,
Without way or opening, a very hard fall.
In the beginning, beginning's very middle,
See my blinding opening, your pure white hole.
Summoned by something making answering its call,
Walking an opening where stepping is trail,
Stumbling perfectly, on stumbling, the way a ball,
Deep surface, no opening, feels, cannot, its roll —
Will these clauses, unconcluding, speak being's wheel,
Our anarchic opening, foundation beyond frail?
Or are they, caught underneath, wax to empty seal,
Signs only of opening, of depths unreal?
Event of oneself, so perversely actual,
Queerest opening, a sparrow through the hall.
No joy comes to me from possessing this or that.
Vacuums on vacuums is the world of this and that.
A something so real that densest stone is a dream.
Just saying this brings real relief from this and that.
The moon was lovely all night long in the window,
But now dawn calls us outward, into this and that.
Will there be time, within time, for our secret need?
Where is the space, within space, for this and for that?
Nothing anyone says ever captures the sense,
The abysmal actuality of this and that.
And no words paint with more wisdom and wonder
Than pure deixis, the pointing of this and that.
Ask Nicola what he means, so that we might know,
And be happy again in hearing this and that.
Nameless desire, new epic longing for home,
Hurts my heart to think it, embers every bone.
Is there a way to sing, to speak so deep within,
Beneath it, out from under oceanic stone?
Where is the impasse, mountain, or immortal foe?
Where is the impossible it to face alone?
One foot there and one foot here, I walk all moments
Within it, across the chasm where I am thrown.
Light quilts the jagged, self-cutting city, healing,
Wholing it, sewing wounds for which we will atone.
So many portals, fractals. Each face a monster
And hero hunting it down a hole all its own.
Nicola girds himself in flesh and words and thoughts
About it, ready for what will be always known.
For my last bed, I’ll have two mementos: a doll to represent my millions of unborn children bled
away and my curriculum vitae engraved on lead by a calligrapher specializing in weddings.
For my last portrait, on my tombstone, after my bearers slide me like a luge through corridors of
snow, I’ll have an out-of-focus photo for genealogists content with unknown universal relatives.
For my last house number, I’ll have not the mark of the beast but the envoi, even words
descending inside, odd words rising on the outside, a summary sendoff instead of destruction.
For my last toast, a cocktail to keep me content in my grave, I’ll have prozacky tap water, the
same drink that produces well-sedated zombies for for pew time and Times Square drunkenness.
For my last container, I’ll have not eros and psyche a la roman empire but a plastic body bag that
pays for food, little league uniforms, iPods, tampons and forsythia bushes to adorn front yards.
For my last outfit, I’ll have a dress shoplifted from Filene’s Basement. I am dying, I will say.
Afterward, you can put it on your roll-out rack of tarnished, marked-down, suicide-worn frocks.
For my last thoughts: you, slaughtered tree in your abattoir, branches gone, like a cat dipped in
water. you, Siberian calves, your life cycle in darkness, by night frozen in your mother’s wombs
Jesus, dipped into the chalice and plucked out, struggles like a mouse in a cat’s mouth;
between the priest’s thumb and forefinger leaves his bloom as from a butterfly’s wing.
Not the tao of hot and cold nor the tao where the yolk and white of an egg meet
but the shifting, wheeling tao of erotic and affectionate love, the yang and yin.
Affection ran up my arms from your hands in mine; you gave me a secret, take-home love;
I held it in, packed on molecules, grew a wind egg, put the baby in a cradle made of string.
Secret languages, lost because nobody’s left who knows. White socks on Thursday, tennis shoes
over a powerline, Sumerian script, handshakes, a left-is-right-and-right-is-wrong earring.
Hey, sad ugly guy, ja wanna be buried with the wicked or the rich? Maybe do the cremation
diamond thing and ride around Ivana’s neck as a nice bit of bling-bling?
God said, don’t tell anybody but I couldn’t stand being away, wanted to feel hunger and love and limbs
moving again. That’s why sometimes you still see me here, lingering.
I’ll pose for my death mask early on, when I’ve lost just enough weight to look good. When
I put it on, you can dress in red but cover the mirrors, tell the bees, count the tree’s rings.
Sun Jul 6 10:55:28 2008
The first and third of these three ghazals make interesting use of the qafiya — close to the Arabic form as explained by David Jalajel, especially in the first ghazal. Ghazal One also ends with a reference to the story of the sparrow flying through a hall; this story is told by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History. It provides a trope that occurs in various unrelated contexts.
Riesener's excellent ghazals have appeared several times in The Ghazal Page. Her long lines accommodate a richness of images that resonate with feeling and implication. Notice, in the first couplet of "Gloomy Sunday" the repeated blow of "-ed" repeated in "bed," "bred" "lead," and "weddings." Other occurrences of the short "e" in this couplet reinforce the effect. The world of "Ghazal: Secrets" is one in which the unfamiliar, disconcerting, pops up out of the familiar. "Gloomy Sunday" looks always to the stasis of death; "Secrets" is charged with energy even in the last sher.