Alphabet Year
Devon Miller-Duggan
Alphabet Year
Devon Miller-Duggan
Copyright © 2017 Devon Miller-Duggan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0308-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0310-5
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0309-9
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15
This one’s for Miriam.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the following journals and their editors for publishing these poems (sometimes with different numbers):
Apeiron Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 10: Beware
Birds Piled Loosely, Proper Abecedarian 17: Belief
Disorderly Abecedarian 18: List
Proper Abecedarian 18: Divorce
Disorderly Abecedarian 20: Guide
Proper Abecedarian 20: HaShoah
Cider Press Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 3: Blasphemy
The Cresset, Disorderly Abecedarian 6: Hidden
Gargoyle, Disorderly Abecedarian 5: Calendar
Hollins Critic, Disorderly Abecedarian 12: Cup
Ink & Letters, Disorderly Abecedarian 16: Jive
Proper Abecedarian 16: Flora
Kestrel, Disorderly Abecedarian 24: Wedded
Rain, Party & Disaster Society, Proper Abecedarian 4: Eleven
Rappahanock Review, Proper Abecedarian 1: Turns
Proper Abecedarian 6: January
Red Paint Hill, Disorderly Abecedarian 19: Kisses
Rock & Sling, Disorderly Abecedarian 4: Kenosis
Disorderly Abecedarian 8: Theology
Proper Abecedarian 8: Introversion
Whale Road Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 2: Return
White Stag, Proper Abecedarian 7: Drowning
Proper Abecedarian 21: Tempest
Proper Abecedarian 23: Cloud
The Windhover, Disorderly Abecedarian 1: Beach
My further thanks go to the bag of sand mold letters that started this all; to my husband, Seamus, my first and best reader, always; the crew of Friday Nite Writes; the good people of the Thomas Parker Society Reading in Santa Fe (especially Jeffrey Overstreet for the best response to a poem I am ever likely to enjoy), and the Glen Workshops for being the ground on which these poems found their feet. Marci Rae Johnson is an acute and fearless editor who found an arc I had only vaguely sensed.
Disorderly Abecedarian 1: Beach
Querulous weather—rain on the ocean flattening sky—
indicators shifting breeze to breeze,
nerving blue beyond the pool—
voluptuary bubbles at one end, stillness at the other.
Menace in a kind of white
obligates nothinging.
Proposition: lines run—shore, dune, storm fence, grass, sidewalk, street, veins.
Zones of keeping or tending—
unfold, unfurl, unwind, unmove, unblur.
Ribboning sound from a child or gull.
Choice-broken hearts everywhere anyone older than a child.
Harvesting rest, breathing in salt.
Xeric heart unfilled, but sufficed.
Yenning dries the ground.
Kilter, off-kilter, on-kilter—presence of absence of welcome.
Fidgeting in the throat instead of speech
anatomizes emotion the way a raccoon washes its hands.
Walk away. Walk toward. Walk over. Walk.
Blithe as dying.
Joss for living.
Syncopy in the sky again—breeze intent, though.
Grind down into sand this heart. Push iron rod in and wait for lightning, for storm-made glass.
Love you can dig out with your hands.
Elision of sympathy and lightning—hard as pyrex hearts—
damage that pays the tithe—
torqued branches, wild transparencies.
Proper Abecedarian 1: Turns
And fall & the light tasting of good scotch, like
belief you don’t even need to swallow before it lights your tongue.
Catching up. Coming back. Cleaning off. It’s okay—you
dove fingers-first into the blue pool summer. Climb out.
Ends. Hinges. Folds (mountain, valley). Turning. Summer’s
fainting from her own heat,
grating her bare toes on sidewalks, self-abrading for penance.
Here the light pours like waking, even as it shortens. Dirt
inherits the leaves it fed.
Just as after harvesting, it’s good to cut things back to ground.
Kin to air all summer, your skin remembers separateness.
Limber all summer, your skin recalls contraction.
Much presents itself, absents itself—like family or
nerves shifting sequence—firing or frosting
or fluttering your fingers, your skin, leaves. Hinges all manifest in skin,
plain skin against the plain surface of shift—
quieting the way deer quiet before bending to feed. Air
rounds on us, carves us a cave to wear,
so wound about you—
too hungry for love,
unknowing what we knew, yet
voluptuary as eiderdowns,
weathering the bustle and turn,
xerosis of leaf and ground, then frost killing rot.
You can love your skin again because it requires you cover it,
zealous for keeping close.
Disorderly Abecedarian 2: Return
Fainting sky today pulls