wait... NOT leather-bound?

[from an email to a dear friend].

yesterday i took that test.

i scored not so well. some people i tell that to, the truth, to others i lie, and sound really optimistic. 

i'm not sure the distinction yet, what makes the difference. 

to those i tell the truth, about how i didn't do so well, i think i think those people know that i am smart. if not smart, at least something, something of value. if at least not of value, of something. 

while taking the GRE, i started off shaking. i drove there almost crying, but maybe not for reasons you'd think. at least, the reasons surprised me. i was grateful for those who had worked so hard to help me study, explained where the zeros go, all the this:this as that:that. that welling of grief and thankfulness and fear and clarity; it was as if i was heading to an execution, and the absurdity of that made nervous.

i did calm down, sort of, eventually.

there was a lot i didn't know, ridiculous words and math. HIDEBOUND was on there, which made me smile, because i had come across it and everyone i knew who knew anything about the GRE scoffed and said it wouldn't be. so here i am, taking this awful standardized test, full of archaic words that are meant to sound like the opposite of what they mean, and wracking my brain to guess at what a standard deviation is, while squinting at some gross amalgamation (which means mix, which was a word i studied, which was not on there) of numbers. 

but during a reading comprehension section about passenger pigeons i smiled, and paused; i had been waiting for this. here, the missing pieces i might need to complete a poem that had been ruminating in my head for months now. when that happens it's like the flash of light at the edge of a knife-- it's quick, blink and you could miss it, but it is unmistakable. and a bit threatening. 

honestly, i spent a valuable twenty or so seconds trying to memorize what i needed to for that poem. and then i moved on to what the test needed of me. old habits die hard.

[HIDEBOUND: unwilling or unable to change because of tradition or convention. see: GRE; me]. 

Amsterdam

I spent.... 4ish?... days in Amsterdam a few years ago. In that 4 days, and in this poem, I went to Anne Frank's house, the van Gogh museum, and wandered into the plastination exhibit, THE BODIES. Walking through THE BODIES, in the state I was in, beside my very tall Texan friend Will, sharing an iPod, listening to Sigur Ros and Modest Mouse and Azure Ray and other hauntingly perfect music, culminated in a life-changing experience. My encounter with "The Running Man" was the last straw that made me write this. 

I am currently working at the original (read: non-organ-thieving-prisoner-killing) plastination exhibit BODY WORLDS. As I was rereading some of my old poetry, in search of something not only salvageable but beautiful, I came across this poem, and was sort of surprised how full-circle things had come, and that I had almost forgotten I had written it.

My time in Amsterdam was the only time in my life I can really remember breathing for breathing's sake. 

[As it's posted here, it's gone through 4 editing rounds since it was written, and it may go through more, but since it's been about a month since I posted, I thought I'd share what I was thinking about].

Amsterdam

by Iris Moulton

 

Surgical river splits the city into heart-districts,

chambers for the sleeping.

 

Here is where we breathe

where we think

sightseeing

the best way out

 

bare trees glisten in the sun like wet lung-vines.

 

Her home is still in black and white, trellises

reaching up to their dead through clouds thought

to be WWII smoke. I touched

walls she touched, fingerprints kissing through generations

of retouched paint. A curtain parted

to let light in where she could not.

 

Outside again. Rain whips through blackness

umbrellas bent naked inside out surrendered to bins

or painted lines on streets. In each new gust a draft of

languages, mess of colored flags.

 

All shelter sought is

the dark-cornered kind; smoke comes free with the air we pay

to breathe. Rumors of absinthe flap their wings but I say

to you “I can’t understand drinking

in a place like this…. I said I can’t understand

drinking

in a place like

this,”

and what could have been a nod is wrestled from your drunken brow.

 

I move beyond the doors and into air

wet with street. I have been

reckless with my sex but no more

than you.

 

There was a man i saw in one

of my twisted hours he was running his clothes

powdered off and into the grass

like pollen the blanket of his skin

flapped off and his muscles began to flick apart he kept running his bones so white

he leapt into the

naked black sky

and burst apart and

became stars.

 

The lines of my world

bend with each step, planks of wood arrowed toward an

empty bed. Beneath the shock-red sheet I imagine tulips and

how cold it must be to bloom through winter.