Amanda Auchter
I'm tempted to call these three poems by Amanda Auchter 'impressionistic.' For, in the way that an impressionist's painting gestures at an image with a wash of color here or an emphasis on natural light there, these poems blur gently-- masterfully-- at their edges. Their lines are fluid; they bleed into their own evenings. In the poem "Flood" Amanda writes, "Along the Gulf / where the house of your childhood stood, / each pane bubbled out of its framed socket, / the power lines split / the muddied ground. Chris, that whole city / was a grave you’d never visit." The effect of this is an at-once stark, startling, and sensitive treatments of her subjects. Even the imperatives in the last poem here are softened by her technique. "Consider his heart an erratic / lover," Amanda writes. "It forgets its own music."
Thanks, Amanda.
***
Flood
for Christopher Lirette
All the balconies were shard-tossed, broken
by the wind. You held your important saves
on the red eye north to Chicago: someone’s
Collected Works, a train set with a missing
engine. Your Claiborne Street, your bon temps,
grew smaller as the plane climbed
above the delta and paddle boats, the speck
of your roof. A painted orange X,
a sea’s swallow. Along the Gulf
where the house of your childhood stood,
each pane bubbled out of its framed socket,
the power lines split
the muddied ground. Chris, that whole city
was a grave you’d never visit
again. When you left the country
for what you said was for good,
your voice static and high wind,
you were still flooded, a ditch
filled with debris, a refrigerator
taped shut. Your house
ten feet below the canal’s ruined edge.
***
Aceldama
with a line from The Gospel of Judas
After the kiss, after you hung
wrist-snapped, bile-
tongued, I walked the dream-
carved streets, my body
a broken tablet, and listened for you
to say, Lift up your eyes and the rope,
my mouth, filled with the red hinge
of hunger. Look
at the cloud, a tooth grinding out
your name. And the light
within it shadows over the city, the stink
of camel-rot, garbage. In the twilit-
tree, I wait for my body
to burst back into earth,
into the stars surrounding it. How alike
we are now: flesh-strung, forgiven. And the star
that leads rises over this field
of blood. In the bark-stripped trunk,
your pale throat, the knothole
of eyes. What little choice I had
in the grove, with your face against mine,
the bright moon between us. Not yet,
you whispered, pressed my fingers
into the wounded dark. The way
is your star. How far was the crucifix, then,
the scattered silver. Your ember-
lit breath, dark bread on my tongue,
the branch my body would break.
***
Letter to the Doctor Performing the Stent Surgery
Photograph the heart’s chambers,
valves. Work my father back
from the lip of almost death, from the table
he filled with fried eggs, sausage, Miracle
Whip. Scaffold him with mesh, wire,
hug him against the thin balloon
catheter. Watch the divided highway
of his heart, how each vessel twists
and wrecks into the soft
beginnings of decay, the fire-
sloped hills of organs and veins.
Unmake the father he’s become—
a body filled with storms and sickness,
a tongue of butter, grease. A hole
punched through sheetrock. Forgive
the boiling sea of his angry hunger,
how he overlooks vitamins, fruit, birthdays.
Consider his heart an erratic
lover. It forgets its own music.
***
About the Poet:
Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award judged by Rigoberto González and of the chapbook, Light Under Skin (Finishing Line Press, 2006). A former Theodore Morrison Poetry Scholar for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she has received awards and honors from Bellevue Literary Review, BOMB Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, and others. Her writing appears in American Poetry Review, Court Green, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College-CyFair.
On the identity of The Nepotist:
The Nepotist has a flair for fashion and adores his/her martini as dirty as one can get. Recent reports claim The Nepotist was on the pom-pom squad back in high school, but read Shakespeare on the sidelines. The Nepotist has several unusual talents, among them: fire eater, line editor, speed reader, and, of course, cocktail maker extraordinaire. The Nepotist has amazing hair and was once a candidate for Breck commercials back in the late 70s.
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