dedicated to my great-grandmother for opening the pages ! to my grandmother for editing the pages to my mother for encouraging the pages
the devil & his jar
by anastacia stevens
gegenschein noun, astronomy indistinct light reflected opposite the sun, during the night it is thought to be the image of the sun reflected from the gas
and dust
collected outside atmosphere
CONTENTS: migration twilight the devil & his jar ocean knots love poems wakefulness 11:45 PM voyage two mouths open /two mouths divided ancestors
migration winter is beginning and all the birds are migrating south to better pastures & fertile fields I their watcher in the window bent over page crafting a language that thrives in dark. a relic of sainthood I am unworthy to mend with written alms restless & leaning I am assembling a field of words a gathering of mark so unlike the birds whose reign stretches from China to the Black Sea landlocked odes they will not sing unless they are reunited with the momentum of the ocean rather than living through a tiny window that hoards all entering light they are no longer words but unwound strings weightless but still driven to unravel hanging in the air as wallpaper on the surface of a building crinkling as it falls as sloughed off skin
of which after there will be no single remain only the gouge of the in-between spaces of noun & adjective, voided currents and colored layers that have reinvented the surface pristine what words are these to originate so slowly, evasively slipping over tongue slipping past hands slipping through lips they must be the devil’s tongue to love a world such as this
twilight my loss is best felt at twilight through the scattering of the sun’s rays parted by horizon and ground when time is still united past & present undivided sitting side by side a common experience navigating adagio as the dark spreads in handfuls my ability to speak is concealed struggling through the hues of eventide a mark frenetic building harbinger of black duet of the threshold breaking from linen to ash from light to dark a world unlit no language will survive as the colors dwindle splitting into pairs salt and pepper set on the table each one shaken to the ground which regards a sky opening two lips that will come an eventual close
blessed are the eyes that survive this consummation to see the crematoria filled with a burden of desire filled with a humanity never felt as the pages are burned time is only able to pause for this second take heed it is dwindling in hibernation cover your face with your hands so as not to see the fall
the devil & his jar the light is only a memory twilight has ended the pages have been burned and he is here in this empty house that everyone else has left behind so we might remain together in company the devil with his jar in hand where all the pulp & grit of my words lie waiting in the wake of his aboral coaxing from blain & blistered lips he has not led the words homeward only towards anathema he knows my nature and I his we are locked together two beasts and two eyes demon & burden both hunting a million dreams rushing along the banks of a river in old & new english we are one in the same with only one exception: the jar
what must I do to be given this jar? I can hear it humming hear it strike a vocalization of desire to slip a tongue down a neck a clavicle through all the small spaces where gravity is vacant it is no wonder he found it and took it before all my words were born onto the page running unopposed bringing them to sudden death by collecting them in his jar all of my songs reduced fireflies struggling swarming at the punctured holes borne into the metal lid clinging to them in their misery to survive a child’s game.
ocean knots I have a thousand dreams about fish & birds and the burdens of the body each one a small extinction behind the eyelid inside the rib cage they begin a ritual with a day extinguished when tables have broken their bread, crumbs settling on the blue & white china pattern small pieces mirroring a whale sleepwalking in the ocean as they settle themselves towards the ocean’s bottom and its lament through sleep my body often follows to the ocean a primal play that remembers that land rests on the dark water’s shoulder clinging towards the top, its steeple; the edges of land and sea man & unman a world a dream where so many things are left behind bits of glass and knots of ribbon which are muddied and worn disregarded except for the suction of water salty
they are now concubines of the sea kept as trinkets to be tousled and brought down vortices as the men that walk the shore are threatened hush! I must pace quietly so as not to be dwarfed by the swell that could eat giants as they sleep or wake none are an exception each time with reverence I approach to pick through the sand to see what the ocean deems fit to souvenir a reminder of such a journey I have taken to find myself through the sleeping world remembering the ocean was before and will be after the dawn of man and life is birthed from its turbulent indifference ! !
love poems: partings
we have set our table with bedlam and I begin to think of you under the fathoms of sea beds constantly adrift in a murky void if only this were enough for you to be caught in the cadence of an ocean, lost to a pulse of waves & time if only I could eat men with my words you would be lost forever. but my fingers are rotten only capable of reverie threadbare novels that are bruised and filled with the ecstasy of memory I fear to use them so they must be left unused never touching paper & pen together with the devil alive & thriving
joined
if I could unloose the devil from my body I would but I am not the same hunter I once was half of my parts are missing from my heart & body such a situation as ours will never be absolved as we still hear each other through the sounds of our words my mouth and your mouth when united create bilabial sounds such as our first meeting where we conducted a symphony of vowels by opening novels touching the edges trailing our fingers down the page taking into mouths the contents of living paragraph & word papers folding one over another open-jawed through the middle, trembling by the conclusion.
wakefulness night has set my eyes are ajar visionless in the dim only ears are practical to discern the river and the water’s movement
I relive these thoughts night after night out of desire out of need for something other than an echo an acknowledgement
tonight I commiserate with the water’s wretchedness and in my mind’s eye grasp the edge of the river’s brackish belly fueled by the whim of gales
together we would save the tides from being dismal & empty, honey or tar throughout the hours for the river to wake meanwhile we live as two illuminated specks in the dark: the river & its keeper
first I lower an elbow, a toe for an instant touching the surface, a fantasy for myself and the river to touch as despite intention together we must remain celibate as always I am making a mockery of myself in this private behavior uncovered by the trees lined up in rows like a string of prisoners who accept execution silently leering at this exhibition
11:45 PM it is just the train and I trembling along the rail fragile, reflecting an orb of moon a tint we both know so well in the morning in the evening there is never day in a life such as ours; only a glimmer of gegenschein during this nightly journey
I never take these opportunities to venture through new lands even though I understand each as a possibility and a mission split into a thousand faces of chance to discover moments to live for: a rugged mountain, dormant volcano ! with the crags dwarfing ! my body which is only ! large in the nucleus of the city
my watch reads 11:45 PM and I long ago buried my book to look outside the window the murky layers of dark ghosts thick & indiscernible fields I have never seen illuminated as I trudge along my journey day after day
not when it is trembling from ! the climb and stands ! at the peak ! knowing what the truth ! of enormity is
it is at this time that I am aware of my eyes’ blindness not from illness but a memory’s slow decline rarely knowing the meadows and oceans that I have missed in my sensory details imagining what their touch their look, their feel would be in my misspent palms that have long ago forgotten the weight of the world’s center"
largeness, that in the world I normally walk man works to remake in buildings and world wonders which, in truth, even I ignore now in my quest for a new jar as much as they are just a capstone of the great, quaking world like the breadth of the spaces in-between the trees to sojourn in and admire the heaviness of fruit on the bough they should be studied and given courtesy: niles and pharaohs even these nightly voyages have killed the man-made gods
much to my devil’s joy these gods have not survived dug up from the archeological dig in shards of pottery and fresco to preserve the thousands of years that mock my own coming end with never having walked the miles and miles north, south, east & west the directions I so wanted to walk instead of sitting gravely on the carriage seat quiet and listening to the hum of the train replacing the primal song at 11:45 PM soon to be 11:46, then 11:47 the minutes are crashing together until the conductor comes through the compartment opening the doors opening the curtain to the regular a reminder that my momentum will pass when the stern foot of the engineer hits the brakes and the train clatters to the station: ! every homecoming is a reckoning. ! ! ! ! !
voyage until I wandered I never knew my vocabulary so empty & altered with the advancement of the dark the letters all stored in the jar have followed me in all the places I have tried to root myself in: such places can have no joy if there are no words to describe the rocks and cliffs I can only relate to the the edges of the ocean and abandoned train lines each of which I have placed the importance of infinity, 50,000 years and longer through all of this my only vision is my words being led to extinction such sounds! they should not be wasted! lingering, they are waiting to be returned. my hands are vacant yielding to entropy and misuse phantom limbs wishing to be returned to the body & engaged in collected experience where sounds are animated by the written word such a memory of this is not enough for a new jar to be made as the margins have met an untimely end.
and what of the image of the devil does he sit there crowned on a throne with a glass jar in his hand, trailing his fingers around the rim, the edge and pausing to threaten to turn the lid open and let the words fluter away before they know how I love them ! before the typewriter is unburied if I do not go homewards my words will only be relics objects of madness & voided energy when opened, they will be spread out like a shroud to be laid to rest in the endless conversation extinguished a generation of tone & line destroyed by a fiend a playwright never they will know the inside of books only the inside of a jar they must be opened
two mouths divided
two mouths open I. I have returned to confront the devil the morning is breaking the sounds are entering as I open the door and walk through the door frames. II. where is evidence of the jar & its keeper? my pearl lost in the garden my words lost to the page they must be reclaimed and the typewriter unburied I am searching and the devil is waiting sitting in a chair with a thousand faces: a mother, a man a ghost, a god a part of my palpitating heart III. foolishly, I am persistent despite my blindness in this empty house reaching into the darkness touching a hand to a face to his mouth which I know is there to his mouth looking for a set of my words the dictionary sounds in broken margins animated poems buzzing in the jar he is gripping IV. and I am singing hymn hymn hymn to reclaim them to unscrew the top, struggling to find the direction to open open open the jar, the devil is watching surprisingly he is placid adrift and above my struggles powerful he might be shifting from face to face: mother and father woman and child prophet and heretic when suddenly he opens his hand to let me take the jar
V. the devil is in me or not at all. god is in me or not at all. VI. and I remember in sleep walking I have braved a canoe bearing my body trinkets from the ocean, selected.
the river styx the load
I have dropped the jar and it is laid bare on the floor. VI. and I am walking the ground between the dark and light burning I will brave this empty house where even when speaking quietly love still echos even if you are not within its borders VII. the sun is rising a burst with the return of birds of whom I had attached my hopes fluttering the oleanders in the distance they pause and shake in the wind and the devil has risen out of the chair while I am unfolding the words he does not look back to see the pages filling with ardent emotion and energy.
VIII. a cacophony of words is building running upwards and downwards loud & intact forceful & telling notes on a page filled with the audacious sounds of infamy & infinity IX. language is reunited with my writer’s hand I am placing syllables on the paper I am putting the words together freeing them from the jar to survive the deluge the flood of time And I Will Declare:
ancestors (X). I will order my words and grant them allowances of precision & line If only so my vowels will form a village and my words the entire town For once these have been built brick by brick, story by story I will measure their length heedful of both motion and weave I will be the speaker of verses if not the sower of words who will create the voices of such unuttered song such that has never been heard from ears such that has never been spoken from mouths from others who have had such love affairs that are no less than mine our words will run together then an entire country of syntax forming the bodies of sentences and the fabric of language.
end.