We Are Clay

Russell Evatt

Epiphany Editions 2012

Acknowledgments

The Basilica Review, “In the Garden of Profit”

The Battered Suitcase, “Take Skies”

Blue Earth Review, “Potatoes”

Frostwriting, “Of the Past, I have only Hints”

Gemini Magazine, “Huge Catholic Cathedral”

PANK, “Poem Ending with a Fragment from A Theory of Truth”

Poems & Plays, “Well-worn Hymnal”

SNReview, “Man”

specs journal, “We Are Clay”

Whiskey Island, “Ancient Civilization”

Wilderness House Literary Review, “The Consigned Witness”

Published by Epiphany Editions, © Russell Evatt 2012.Cover designed by Martin Rock set in FFF Tsuj. Contents designed and set by Joe Lops, set in Sabon and Memphis.

Table of Contents

I 1

Poem Ending With a Fragment from 2

A Theory of Truth

Sketching People 3

Huge Catholic Cathedral 4

In the Garden of Profit 5

Well-Worn Hymnal 6

Take Skies 7

A Playground Skirmish as the Beginnings of War 8

The Consigned Witness 9

Danger 10

Victims’ Bodies Arrive at Airport 11

Man 12

Bad Water 13

II 15

Potatoes 17

A Quick Summary of my Favorite Movie, 18

L’Avventura by Antonioni

Ancient Civilization 19

Mass-Market Fortune 21

Of the Past, I Have Only Hints 22

Petition to a Listener 23

We Are Clay 24

Noise Control 25

I Told You So Sonnet 26

Groceries in the Afterlife 27

I

2

Poem Ending With a Fragment from A Theory of Truth

“Certain things can never be spoken.” To demonstrate, my friend vowed to keep his big mouth shut for a year. “Nothing said,” he said the day before he started keeping track. Now he relies solely on gestures. I pretend I don’t know what he means when he points toward the door. “I don’t know what you mean” I say and he relaxes his arms. We sit on the couch. I think about Sisyphus and he watches Comedy Central. We both laugh. We both yawn during the slow parts. If there’s one thing he’s taught me, it’s that any theory is intelligible only to someone who understands the language in which it is stated.

5

In the Garden of Profit

I am standing, a skull with legs. I can’t live for the stars

until the baggage of the liver is left behind, until the stomach is forgotten. I tell you

the tree was the body, disguised; that men are heaviest at midnight. God narrates

these fair diggers as they devour the earth. What I fear most is honesty. The stars

have slid on and blindly fed us this nightbut I don’t hide my moonlit armor and stand

defenseless (I bought the invention of the body). Some men rule the mask more.

Under this pale light our ellipses unfold into doubt. Our tongues fill the market.

6

Well-Worn Hymnal

The swell of the evening merged into the infinite night.We got over it. Blinking lights.The fuzziness of the martini glass.We spent our timeas loosely as our money, retireddrink after drink. It was allso orderly. She made dinnerwearing only her apron of discontent.She cooked for a crowd. We ateleftovers for a week. When she grewtired of me I shaved my beard.I was a new man. Thenit grew back and I was the same manas before. We built this churchtogether, she said. I sat down in a chair and sang.

10

Danger after Witold Gombrowicz

There she is. Looking at her little hand, which is engulfed by her mother’s hand. The street so near. From the edge of the sidewalk to the path of the cars on the street is approximately three feet. There they go; they’re going to do it! So close, they wait near the edge of the speeding cars—a foot or two into the street just standing there! Does the mother not see how close they are? How can I watch this? But I do. I do watch as they cross safely and walk down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, not even realizing how close they were to death.

11

Victims’ Bodies Arrive at Airport

This hollow boxof a heart tumbles, as if a stonekicked from the edge of the path down the bank into the clarion water.I’ve heard all I need,nudged toward appropriate loss.The stone’s drop heard clear as truth,which is to say,not heard at all,dampened fromour distancealong the path.

18

A Quick Summary of My Favorite Movie, L’Avventura by Antonioni

Now that’s how you say hello to a woman, right on the lips, no cheek for a real man. Let the people who are waiting, wait. And if it’s Monica Vitti you make doubly sure you grab her by the shoulders and look into her eyes now that you’ve got the chance. The beautiful Italian sea brushes against the rocks while Claudia furrows her concern. There’s a missing woman but I’m not concerned, there’s scenery to be seen, Monica is in the frame, after all. I knew a woman who looked like her, once, when I was lost in Poland and wandering around talking to myself. She joined me for hours but I never kissed her, could never take the moment. Then the movie ends with the man making out with a prostitute on a couch in an empty dining hall. Not exactly what I would’ve done but when I had my chance I didn’t do anything and so I guess one kind of regret is the same as another.

25

Noise Control

I flipped through my lifeas if it were a magazine. Cheap. Glossy. Some of the pictureswere good. There was an article about a sea monster. What typeof death-blow would it take to kill this monster, was the question. It can’t survive the shallow depths’ lack of pressure. So the death-blowis simply to bring the monster to the surface. That sounds like a metaphor—Look,there’s the current-me and the past-you, yucking it up for old time’s sake.You sound like I rememberyou sounding, but really I speakfor the both of us. A decadeis a long time. I packed a suitcaseand planned for the stay.