Thomas Heise

Thomas Heise was born in 1971 in northern Michigan. He grew up in southern Florida, and went on to receive a BA from Florida State University, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis, and a PhD in American Literature from New York University. His poetry and essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Verse, and other journals. In 2004, he received the Gulf Coast Prize for Poetry. His first book of poems is Horror Vacui (Sarabande, 2006). A former curator of the Reading Between A and B Series in New York’s East Village, Heise is now a member of the English Faculty at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and is working on a second book of poems while completing a critical volume on 20th-century urban American literature and culture.

Corrections

We were mistaken. The Queen never
loved  a  horse.  The  whole  mystery
will    surface    when    we    recover
the      missing      notebook      from
the   wreckage.  “In   summer,  she’d
wander  the  lawn  in  her  white  robe,
the  light  in  her  hair”  is  a  misquote.
Apologize.     Fill     in     the     blank
with your trumpet.  On  page  nine  all
the    names   are    untrue.   We were
mistaken.   The   man   running   from
the crime scene remains  unidentified.
My  whereabouts:   unknown.  I  am
lost   in   Newfoundland.   We   were
mistaken.   Erasure  on  your  heart’s
fifth  amendment  should  read:   No
one  slept  here.
  Memorialize  it—
dream      it      permanent.      Even
the    sparrow    you    lifted    dead
from   the   basket   was   an   error.

My Pietà

He held me bone-tight. He held me backward.

He held me high with the bellows

to smoke the beehive, hanging delicate

as a lung in the branches and bleeding

a half-gallon of honey while he held me. He held me

in the bathtub, scrubbed ashes from my small tongue.

He held me in the pond of his hand,

as if I were a tadpole, and wouldn’t let go.

He held me hostage. I would hide

in the dumpster. Under the rain bucket

during thunderstorms. Holding my breath

among the lawn statues of gnomes and giant toadstools

until he found me, held me, walked me home.

When I fell asleep in the attic, he would carry me down

and sing to me. One winter he held a rope, lowered me

by the ankles to the well’s bottom.

I ascended upside-down through the dark thermometer

with a blood orange in my teeth. He had a beard

of new snow. I held cold to his pant leg

while our dog leapt and snapped at a sound

in the air only he could hear. When I fell

in love, he reached out to me and held me down

when she slinked away on our dirt road alone,

sheepish, depressed. He held me as the constellations

mingled through the torn curtain.

A beanstalk sprouted through a hole

in our above-ground pool. A band of raccoons

commandeered the upstairs and stared

at us as he held me in his reading chair.

He grew older, he held my ear

to his artificial heart on a daily basis.

He grew sick, he held me like a suckling child.

We grew smaller and smaller and would crawl

after each other through tall grass growing through our carpet.

The walls of the house fell away.

We curled in a bird’s nest. I could barely hold

his tiny thumb in my fingers.

We felt a shell growing around us.

The dog was barking.

And then rain, we could hear it tapping,

we held each other, then a blast

of hot light roared through.

Zombie

In your three-piece suit and your tuxedo shoes

you’re dressed as if to go, but in your coma

you do not come or go. The wife you left

has come down from the mountain to give

you a matching ring of glass. Your doll-sized

daughter has brought you a kelp flower

that smells of salt to pin to your lapel.

Into your welmish eye, she says,

the world is drearful and you should go now.

But nothing rouses you from the deepwater sleep

in which you melt like an iceberg. On a canopied bier

fit for a sun king, you float and dream of what?

Your kaleidoscope? An octopus? The suitcase,

packed with a warm coat and dried apricots

for your soft teeth, waits at the door.

On the far shore your mother waves for you.

Her little white flag is a seagull’s wing.

There you do not go to her. The bridge stops

in midair, the perch of the swan diver.

The canoe decays into a trough of rosemary,

so I’ll bury it with roses: He loves me, he loves

me not, he loves me, he loves me not he loves

me not. Can you hear me? My ear to your ear

and my dumb voice boomerangs. Your brain

a beehive, its combs dormant from the first

snowfall are full of rings and echoes.

On the floor the cat crouches, lapping

your spilled coins: clink clink clink.

The gargoyle climbs down from his gable

to sit in your rubber plant. He sings a lullaby.

Your paper lips sip an air tube, passive

as a bored child. Your daughter has just

pulled off your caterpillar mustache.

Your wife has turned into a sunspot.

Today I have a small blue heart made of velvet.

I listen for the chanticleer to declare

all-clear for you to go. He has gone,

flown kamikaze into yesterday’s sun.

Now my kingdom of dirt will not fill

the flowered urn where I will store

and sift your ruins bitter for a golden hair.

Now my arm is growing into an orange branch

as I speak. The moon has risen full

behind my leafy eyes. I want to sleep, but

the owl who is eating my tongue says no.