Subterfuge for the Unrequitable “[O]nly the beloved
can in this world bring about what our human
limitations deny, a total blending of two beings, a continuity between two discontinuous creatures. Hence love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible....” Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality 1. I will not repeat I will not repeat I will not repeat no ordinary excavation become ordinary become craven the elixir’s aftertaste divines the elixir it will not devolve [(h)e lie exire exit here] elixir: he licks her (skin) (ellipsis) (denial) while her sears my 2. either the cleaving to or cleaving from argues an ague for any hand that will praise is to pray whose secular world? whose Iron Age? whence touch whence chasm hands and hands hover at the whole 3. Descent might be merely the postponement of ascent descent displacement or a return, the abrupt shudder back into the self, isolate for the cringe Oh Cutting daffodils will not A call: Other? Oh, here you are Projected And ever as 4. your voice through the phone when I a girl of eight or nine why have you gathered them into the desk lamp’s small pool the female spills spills wet hands revel or shake did you have an imaginary the cornfields stretch into wet with saliva and Mandy when I was eight or ten the cache of send any others eight to eleven or twelve your voice did you have send them when the light spills after you read the poem hands in the small the cornfields by my house I was eight or nine a cache by definition does not leak or lose lay down why did you bring else and other drenched don’t wrench alone in the stalks except for what did you have in that field sacrosanct alone and not alone alone and not alone you have that reserve 5. body I scale with a gaze anodyne for the ascetic for the un- toward the moss green (iris) toward is away stained glass (too high) (too holy) I scale for the blur heady in incomplete satis, enough not yet not near but my lips oooooooooh the cusp is always air 6. ether & ephebe odi et amo et amo in the dissipating enunciates touch wrist & nape lips for the summons (not to purse) (not to part) masculate toward (that ether) littlebeard my other toward our ether, ephebe 7. sleet hiss instantiates all walls horas ad dies ad to touch is to torque the familiar or the familiar heightens perlucence death-borne the brief hairs along the curve of your ear sleet susurrus 8. thigh to waist azure all thinking down the arc-stroke up cuts the slow cuts disappearing furrows into the soil of skin of Being that azure infinite eyes & ____________ —Heidegger 9. ante maret terras et quod tegit omnia caelum before the sea and the lands and the sky that covers all things but itself the blur of blooming clover from the train & trained eye Ovid claims ante the parcelled temporality of thirteen hours later you as if and so here in the swash invisible quem dixere Chaos 10.
lip to thigh break into our indivisible oak trunk wheel to axle breathe to gasp the tumbling clock’s a priori but given rib tibia cranium under the skin the muscle around the marrow inside the bone that yet palm to to hip into all dishevelled wandering stars
"Subterfuge
for the Unrequitable" originally appeared in Oasis and as the title
poem of a chapbook published by Potes and Poets in 1998.
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Originally
from Normal, Illinois, carrieetter
moved from
southern California to England in 2001 and was appointed
a lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa University in
2004. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Poetry Review,
Shearsman, The Times Literary Supplement, and
elsewhere. Her blog is at http://carrieetter.blogspot.com.
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