Eating in the Underworld. Rachel Zucker

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      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,