Dan Beachy-Quick

Dan Beachy-Quick was born in 1973 in Chicago, grew up in Colorado, and attended Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poetry has been honored with a Lannan Foundation Residency and has appeared in Colorado Review, Conduit, Ploughshares, Poetry, Volt, and elsewhere, and his reviews and criticism commonly appear in such journals as The Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Rain Taxi, and The Southern Review. His three books of poems are North True South Bright (Alice James, 2003), Spell (Ahsahta, 2004), and Mulberry (Tupelo, 2006). Beachy-Quick lives in Chicago with his wife Kristy and daughter Hana Frances. He is Associate Chair of the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Prologue

Editor,

Here are the lines my mind fathomed.

They are tar-dark. I wrote them on pages

Breathless and blank, as beneath water

Men’s minds are blank but for needing

A next breath. Sir, turn

This page and the thick door opens

By growing thinner, ever thinner,

Until the last page turns and is turned

Into air. Don’t knock. The ocean knocks

Ceaseless on my little craft, and I am

Asking you, Will my craft hold? I send me

To you on a paper-thin hull. Don’t knock.

I’m in there. I breathe on one lung

For both lungs’ air; my hand is wet

With knocking my knuckle to wave, and

Though the wave opens, I am never

Let in. I promised you the deep wave

’s inner chamber, I’m sorry.

Do you see, Sir—

How the crest of a book builds at the binding

And finally spills over on to no shore?

Don’t knock. I will ask the water to open for you

If you’ll stop. Don’t knock, don’t knock, Sir—

Oh, it is not you. My wife’s at my study door

And knows the wood won’t open from wanting

Wood to. I must seal this craft’s last plank

In place, and voyage it over ocean to you.

“Come in.” She’s knocking. “Come in.”

Her hand’s on my wooden shore, door—

I go. Send word, send word. If you don’t, I’ll know.

Unworn

Count me among those almonds    your eyes

Count me      among those almonds your eyes

Never opened. Your mouth    on the floor-fallen pear

Never opened    your mouth on the floor-fallen pear

Count among those almonds    floor-fallen, your eyes

Your mouth    on the pear never    opened me

Open the water-glass with a shattering      disregard

Open the water-glass    with shattering      Disregard

My nervous      finger.      I make me pick up that shard.

My nervous      finger makes me      pick up that shard

That makes      my finger: shattering-water      Pick up

The glass-shard      I open me    with a nervous disregard

What are you to me?      through the window      I see the leaf:

What you are to me      Through the window I see    the leaf-

Bare, budding elm scratch      a nerve against the sky’s

Bare budding      Elm, scratch your nerve against the sky—

The sky against the window      scratched      through the elm to me

I are what you see: a nerve bare-budding    your leaf

I never opened my bare nerve   to see the leaf

Scratch a nervous window against the sky

I count me up among those      the almonds

Floor-fallen      You are the elm worn on a finger

Make your mouth disregard     that budding      glass, the pear-shard—

Through what shattering      water your eyes      opened me with me

Psalm (Traherne)

I lived inside myself until I loved

And then I lived, Lord   then I lived

With thirst   and happiness was thirst

And thirst lived in the center, Lord

Of every water-drop   as in a seed

A mouth hungers

And then a mouth is filled with grain,

And then the mouth becomes the field

Of grain  until the field closes  Lord, begging

“Devour me again—   with less

Distraction.”      Forgive me the sun

Eclipsed by gold   Forgive me

The gold divorced of coin   forgive

Me the coin melted to ring   and most, Lord

Forgive my hand that wears the ring:

That hand I use at noon to shield my eye

From sun.   An infant-eye believes

The star at finger tip is diamond

And doesn’t burn  and night, Lord

Night when most I loved

The sky’s  burden was light   and joyful

The universe you made   you made

For me alone   The new moon’s tender knife

Has cut the dawn to day   At noon, Lord

I see the world is most like you, shadowless

And impossible of shadow. To throw

A stone at star  draws me near you, Lord

Who am not separate, no   Who am not less

Than grain devoured, Lord   A tooth can break

A husk   by husk can be broken   both are prayer, Lord

Both are prayer   As I, open-eyed am open

To You   As close-mouthed, I speak you

Best my hymn   Lord, speak you   best my prayer.

Afterword

Editor,

Mappemundi. That word: I meant

To anchor myself in song with song.

Adrift, I sang shoals at the margin. No,

I sang depth, I mean. I thought myself

Past the margin, Why do I hear you laugh?

I mean

I only spoke no Sirens

When the waves calmed me and no

Monsters when the ocean frenzied—

All was on the page I thought upon.

I see, Sir, the whale dives past margin.

I see the world is flat and the map flat

That records it, and both page and world

Speak each other forever. Put a fold

In eternity and it is just as flat and wide.

Take the map of the world and fold it

Into a boat and the boat becomes the world.

If only, Sir, if only the whirlpool sucked

Through the page into no words—

There with the whale the world could end.

Is that what I want? Why I sang?

Even my “No” is breath cupped in the sail.

A red pen is rudder, uncapped, red ink

On horizon is sunrise: delete dawn, Δ shadow,

Δ shadow at noon.

Here’s my submission,

My last request. I’ve printed my words

On one side of each page. Now turn each

Page over. Spread them out on the floor

Until the floor is blank with no words.

Spill out into hallway on this wave. Walk it.

When the blank page ends in white tile

You won’t notice. When you walk out

The glass door the taxi’s horn will be the hawk

’s cry. Out my front door, the traffic is ocean.

I hate the sunset’s every red ribbon

Because, untied, they reveal

A lamp gone out. A day. No oil can be lit

In a pewter midnight that, once burned,

Will never burn again. I see the dark edge

Of day saline beneath water. No anchor

In song. The world is flat if the page is flat.

Delete all. Here’s one country: my hand.

It seals the envelope. Here’s one country:

My lips, my tongue. They seal the envelope.

Suffer whiteness. My white hand in a white cloud.

My lips white with salt. The white rain—I see it—

Sings white a lullaby to the milky white ocean

And the milky white ocean      calms

It calms as it dives down.