EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD
EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD
RACHEL ZUCKER
WESLEYAN POETRY
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
PUBLISHED BY WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
MIDDLETOWN, CT 06459
© 2003 BY RACHEL ZUCKER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
5 4 3 2 1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
ZUCKER, RACHEL
EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD / RACHEL ZUCKER.
P. CM. — (WESLEYAN POETRY)
ISBN 0–8195–6627–6 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER) — ISBN 0–8195–6628–4 (PBK. : ALK. PAPER)
I. TITLE. II. SERIES.
PS3626.U26 E25 2003
811´.6—DC21 2002152722
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which these poems or versions of these poems first appeared: 3rd Bed, Colorado Review, Columbia Journal, Epoch, Explosive Magazine, Fourteen Hills, New Letters, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and Volt.
Thank you to Larry Sandomir, John Aune, Wayne Koestenbaum, Nancy Kricorian, Lois Conner, David Trinidad, Phyllis Rosen, Jorie Graham, and Brenda Hillman for guidance and inspiration, and to these kind and careful readers: Brian Cassidy, Ben Mosher, Katy Lederer, John O’Connor, Kevin Prufer, Wylie O’Sullivan, Tom Shakow, and Arielle Greenberg. Thanks to Joan, Josh, and most of all to Doug Powell.
Excerpt from “Wuthering Heights” from Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1962 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
“Pomona Brittannica (plate #92), by George Brookshaw.”
for my mother who wrote down my dreams
for my father and his faith
and for Josh
Contents
ONE
1
TWO
45
[ONE]
here there is no place
that does not see you …
RAINER MARIA RILKE
DIARY [GATHERING FLOWERS]
If the light were good I could see everything.
Look through rain, live the even life.
I, who have been pressed and prettied,
feel more watched than wandering,
wonder, does someone expect me?
Today wind, like water pulling back
the pebble-layer, wants to sigh, the big stones
heave and settle. But before the ribs expand
it pulls again.
I crave—
but damn these maidens won’t allow …
The light is just a likeness,
(if I could only show them—)
oh what does the wind want?
DIARY [ON THE BANKS]
a light as if pure and white were one word:
scrito, stepping twice
am I real alone? alone, alone
what waves are for
I cannot afford this sky
or the sky to move on
watching the dead go in, the tides come out
the light might not be the same again
all the light turns green at once
go go go go go
I will
go, not even knowing
where
it seems so simple
this sea
my voice carries (flag snapping, crack of static)
and comes back to me:
no one dies in the land of the dead
DIARY [UNDERWORLD]
Not even the moon saw me withdraw.
I grasped my chastity and swallowed it
into the lower crescent of my belly.
What is it good for? Where does it take me?
Only on cool nights will I need its light
to show me the way toward passion.
The dead draw blood from my shadow
as I walk among them.
I realize now
it was the foreground
that opened up,
not the ground.
There was a seam in that sulphurous
strand and though afraid of water,
I stepped in. Away from where the body
of my mother is everywhere.
DIARY [UNDERWORLD]
My toes reflected in the bath water make a shape.
When I wiggle the big one, two move.
I am still alive.
Hot body in hot bath, the cool stream jets invisibly underwater.
Spout submerged scalding raw, wrinkled fingers.
Cool moving through hot, around hot, pockets
of little atmospheres.
The only thing left to feel:
the mix of fevers.
Remember the beginning, before science was necessary?
Now we know hot does not change cold in any way.
They move around each other:
spreading each other out—first pockets, then harder to recognize—
spreading each other apart, still cold and hot, broken into pieces:
molecules.
Anyone could mistake it for tepid,
that which is scalding and frozen at once.
DIARY [UNDERWORLD]
Somewhere between a father and lover
but not my father or any lover possible.
He says to say ‘the heat hit like a wave’ is not to account
for this impeccable stillness.
He says when I turn my head away it’s like the word broken.
And I am not the same when I look back
to where the world and its thick air are examples:
moth in a glass walkway; he calls me lambent,