I liked these poems by Catie Rosemurgy, at first because I related to the sometimes-consuming quality of my dreams. They eat up a huge amount of head-space throughout the day, depending on what happens. When I was still semi-serious about self-publishing, I had a whole segment in my manuscript about things written from dreams. They are so real that often I forget which mundane action I did in real life and which I didn't. Another thing I came to like about them is the death of self. The more I spend thinking about the self and purpose, the less I am sure any of them are really alive, so I like to see how her speakers kill themselves or die off, time after time.
America Talks to me Like a Mother
Don’t worry. One kills in dreams
but wakes having not killed.
Having not killed is part of waking. Some mornings, though,
you lay there pinned under layers of light, fear,
and woolen blankets.
You know what’s right and what’s wrong,
what you don’t know is what happened
and if you were actually there.
That’s why dreams of digging a deep hole with a stolen shovel
are so confusing. That’s why you expect to jerk awake
when you stand in a pile of dry brush
holding a lit match in your hand.
The best thing to do, always,
is get up and walk down the stairs.
Don’t leave.
Not yet.
Wait awhile in the kitchen, it doesn’t matter whose kitchen,
and let the house absorb the blame.
That’s what a house is for.
You aren’t screaming,
you’re insisting
because you’re always wrong,
even while you sit on the ground before daybreak waiting
for enough light to gather sticks.
You don’t know yet what a stick is.
You can’t be expected to remember anything
once you’ve seen the sun rise.
All day long, you walk back and forth through the field,
standing guard over what didn’t happen
to keep it from mixing with what did.
You didn’t shoot the gun, you just listened well
when people talked about how to do it.
You didn’t walk unscathed through the fire,
you walked unscathed over it.
You happened to find a narrow bridge.
You wouldn’t purposely hurt anyone,
but keep describing all the ways that you would.
List all the things that never happened,
and see if you can suck clean the edges of what did.
you’re insisting
because you’re always wrong,
even while you sit on the ground before daybreak waiting
for enough light to gather sticks.
You don’t know yet what a stick is.
You can’t be expected to remember anything
once you’ve seen the sun rise.
All day long, you walk back and forth through the field,
standing guard over what didn’t happen
to keep it from mixing with what did.
You didn’t shoot the gun, you just listened well
when people talked about how to do it.
You didn’t walk unscathed through the fire,
you walked unscathed over it.
You happened to find a narrow bridge.
You wouldn’t purposely hurt anyone,
but keep describing all the ways that you would.
List all the things that never happened,
and see if you can suck clean the edges of what did.
Winter in Gold River
Pretty girl. The weather has knocked her down again
and given her to the lake to wear as a skin.Why am I always being the weather?
There were days in the winter
when her smile was so lovely I felt
the breathing of my own goodness,
though it remained fetal and separate.
I was a scavenger who survives
with a sling and stones, but whose god
nonetheless invents the first small bright bird.
And it was like flight to bring food to her lips
with a skeletal hand. But now she will always
be naked and sad. She will be what happens
to lake water that is loved and is also
shallow enough. The thickening, the slowing,
the black blood of it, the chest opened
to reveal the inevitable heart attack.
God, the silence of the chamber
we watch from. What happens to water
that isn’t loved? It undergoes processes.
It freezes beside traffic.
But the reaching out to all sides at once,
the wet closing of what was open?
That is a beautiful woman.
So of course I stand and stare, never able
to pinpoint the exact moment I killed her.
I was a scavenger who survives
with a sling and stones, but whose god
nonetheless invents the first small bright bird.
And it was like flight to bring food to her lips
with a skeletal hand. But now she will always
be naked and sad. She will be what happens
to lake water that is loved and is also
shallow enough. The thickening, the slowing,
the black blood of it, the chest opened
to reveal the inevitable heart attack.
God, the silence of the chamber
we watch from. What happens to water
that isn’t loved? It undergoes processes.
It freezes beside traffic.
But the reaching out to all sides at once,
the wet closing of what was open?
That is a beautiful woman.
So of course I stand and stare, never able
to pinpoint the exact moment I killed her.
On the same themes, but too long to reproduce, is her poem Miss Peach: The College Years which you should please also read.
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