NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE
POEMS
KIM ADDONIZIO
FOR THE MAKERS
Everybody knows the captain lied.
—LEONARD COHEN
Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together.
—ELIZABETH TAYLOR
CONTENTS
I.NIGHT IN THE CASTLE
Night in the Castle
Black Hour Blues
Fixed and In Flux
Animals
Comfort of the Resurrection
Grace
High Desert, New Mexico
Signs
The Earth Is About Used Up
In Bed
II.SONGS FOR SAD GIRLS
Wolf Song
Song for Sad Girls
Résumé
Telepathy
Small Talk
Ghosted
August
Winter Solstice
All Hallows
AlienMatch.com
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall
Ways of Being Lonely
Guitar
III.CONFESSIONAL POETRY
IV.ARCHIVE OF RECENT UNCOMFORTABLE EMOTIONS
People You Don’t Know
Ex
The Truth
Archive of Recent Uncomfortable Emotions
The Miraculous
Arrival in Italy
Still Time
Happiness Report
I Can’t Stop Loving You John Keats
Art of Poetry
Babies at Paradise Pond
Little Old Ladies
Death & Memory
Stay
Acknowledgments
I
NIGHT IN THE CASTLE
NIGHT IN THE CASTLE
I’m not sure what to do about that scorpion twitching on the wall
Maybe I should slam it with this book of terrible poetry
or just read aloud to it until it dies of a histrionic metaphor
bleeding out on the ancient stones in a five-octave aria
If I get a little drunker I might try to murder it with my sandal
I gave up on mercy a while ago
That’s what happens when you live in a castle on an artist’s grant
You look at the late-afternoon Umbrian light smearing itself over the tomato vines
& feel entitled—like an underage duchess whose husband has finally died of gout
leaving her free for more secret liaisons with the court musician
She might even have poisoned the duke, the lecherous shit
It’s hard to remember what life was like before this
& I don’t want to, I want to stay here & poison the king next
I want to be a feared & beloved queen ordering up fresh linens & beheadings
locking up bad poets in their artisanal hair shirts
torturing academics with pornographic marionette performances
Meanwhile the scorpion is still there twitching slightly
reciting something about violence & the prison of ego
& I can hear the clashing armies on the wide lawn outside
sinking down into history & then standing up again
BLACK HOUR BLUES
Nothing is the new black’s shit soundtrack.
The elk’s black blood leaks from the roof rack.
Black the prospects of the destitute sick.
Blackberries suppurate in the pie tin.
Green cards burnt black in the gas-lit oven.
Black mold loitering in the privacy of prison.
Black Deepwater Horizon pelican and dolphin.
Through Standing Rock a black worm crawls.
Black Baltimore Mali Iraq Sudan Cambodia Sinai Selma Uh.
The darkling beetle raises its black back and runs
through the black Ghost Ship and Grenfell Tower ruins.
Black Syria Somalia Ferguson Uh Attica Gaza Yemen Huh.
Black heart weighed against an ostrich plume.
Blindfolded goddess, long sword drawn
nowhere in the Oh come down come down.
FIXED AND IN FLUX
The cicadas swarm the pines all summer,
the males flexing their tymbals to make
the horrifying sound that will attract a mate.
The new people are fidgeting in strollers,
running on little piston legs
hard toward the street, toward the breast
and then the beer can, and soon
the breast again. When one door closes,
another floats downriver
under the night sky. Nine planets
seemingly forever and then suddenly
Pluto’s demoted. The king is dead!
Long live the king! Existentially,
we’re either crawling toward
a top-shelf margarita being perfected by
adorable six-winged angels, or else
getting puréed in a food processor
on a decapitated mountain.
Meanwhile, a sea worm slithers through a mortgage.
72% of Americans believe in angels,
no wonder that parasitic amoeba got elected.
Meanwhile, a lake comes to realize
it’s now a grenade.
ANIMALS
I think I could turn and live with animals
—WALT WHITMAN
O Walt you were wrong, they aren’t placid or self-contained
I just watched a spoonbill make carpaccio out of a frog
& crocodiles dining on wildebeests trying to cross the Maro River
It’s wrong to say O in poetry these days
which makes me want to have a loud orgasm right here
in an unashamed animal way
You must have been looking at some cows on a farm but who wants to live like that
standing around in a shed with sore tits, shitting claustrophobically
or standing around shitting & being tortured by flies & eating grass
I know you like grass but it’s no fun to be a pricey pre-hamburger, ruminating with no TV
If you’d had a cable subscription maybe you would have felt differently
watching NatGeo Wild & those exhausted herds on the Serengeti
Walt, I still love you even if in this instance you might have been a victim of the pastoral tradition
Let me tell you about animals: The green anaconda swallowed the young capybara whole
O o oh oh oh OHHHH Walt
Capybaras are the largest rodents on earth
I don’t think I’d survive as an animal for long, even a large one—Look at the elephants
Imagine being murdered & becoming a doodad
or furniture inlay
Walt, I actually like sweating & whining about my condition
Hot flashing & bitching in my cream satin sheets, lying awake drunk & weeping in the dark
I’d definitely like to own more things
An electric knife sharpener for instance would come in handy
for carving up the less fortunate on special holidays
I want to be lucky as long as I can
Walt, Walt, I don’t think death is luckier or leads life forward like you said
I don’t think I’m going to grow from the grass you love
I’m just going to have one last blackout in a dirty pink lace dress
& be eaten by tiny ugly legless larvae
COMFORT OF THE RESURRECTION
One day everything that’s over or dead
will come back, oil painting & God,
chivalry & the kings (even the mad
old rotters, why not, while the heads
of the plotters are removed
from their iron spikes & carefully glued
on again)—why not believe in the miracle—plaid
has already come back so why not the starved
& flooded corpses, why not fresh bread
from charred toast, aren’t the grubbers in the cupboard
constantly churning up from the charnel the old
ingredients, holy seed, holy blood,
nothing is ever destroyed,
but tell that to Marianna whose child
lived for three days brainless & blind
close by cheap factories on the filthy Rio Grande,
tell it to all the ruined & annulled
residents of the earth, everything
& everyone will
