James Kimbrell

James Kimbrell was born in 1967 in Jackson, Mississippi. He attended Millsaps College, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Virginia, and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he received his PhD. His poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Poetry, and elsewhere. Kimbrell’s two books of poems are The Gatehouse Heaven (Sarabande, 1998) and My Psychic (Sarabande, 2006). With Yu Jung-Yul, he translated Three Poets of Modern Korea (Sarabande, 2002). The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and a Bess Hokin Award from Poetry Magazine, a “Discovery”/ The Nation Award, an NEA Fellowship, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, Kimbrell lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and is Director of Florida State University’s Creative Writing Program.

Empty House

Every few nights I walk over here, screen door opened

And springless, leaves now up to the second step,

No one watching out the window but me with my elbows

On the ledge, my face staring back at my staring in.

What if all along, I’d been waiting in there? What if

The bird left its nest behind the mantel and built

Another beside this glass? I still wouldn’t know

How to read something so physical as any moment is,

Something as known as a crooked stick, as the look

Of one wing in the other. Maybe it’s true that everything

Leads to this, a night in which silence displays its own

Hidden architecture, the hewn gables, the untranslatable

Syllable of moon in a tilt above the roof, only to show

How absent the self is. How picked of words. How near at hand.

Letters to a Vanishing Fiancée

1.

The night you left I hooked my heart to that silver

Train’s caboose, so to become, to be, if not

Together, at least passionately dismembered

There among the creosote ties and the rust-spiked

Rails that led, more and more, to you. How quickly

The past became a movie I fell salty-lipped and

Fast asleep in. How walking from that station

Was like waking in a theater, bewildered, the music

At a mawkish end. (What was that woman’s name?

And who was the man she called “My Scientist”?

And why the telescope in the revolving door?

And what did she believe when she said she believed

In him? And why did that city look dark blue?)

2.

You loved me, you loved me not the moment

We split beside the Hudson. We had one map

To the gallery marked X, and two ways

Of arriving, apologetic, so famished

For one another that we would’ve laid down

On the wide marble steps were it not

For the bed of pigeon droppings. We took

The first thing agreed upon—the wrong

City bus. And though it drove us far from home,

How could we have argued, stunned

As we were by evening, by the pier pasteled

With dusk, our window-glazed reflections

Rising in the surface of each other.

3.

A momentary stay: that night, for instance, we slipped

Beneath the barrier chains, waltzed across

The viewing deck and assumed our table

At the abandoned café. If anyone had seen us

They would have known that we’d

Just made the grand decision to marry

No later than the fall. But the bay looked rugged

From that jagged height, and the moon nested

Like a hangnail hooked in the wind-bent trees.

And though we strolled through that darkness

As if through a curtain parted for applause,

If we’d not shown up to see our own appearance

It would hardly have existed at all.

4.

What we mistook for love was love replete

With silences we kept falling through.

Our first date: a failed attempt at biking. Our second:

A night at the planetarium, a heaven we couldn’t help

But give in to once we’d reached your room;

Your dress draped on the chair-back, and cricket sounds

Bending through the window screen surrounded

The crooked space between my body and yours,

An absence which outlasted us. Such was our

Beginning, and such would be our end: two friends—

One adrift amidst the platform bustle, the other

Stepping into the passenger car’s interior glow,

Glancing at the numbered seats, walking down the row.

Salvation

It’s not that I harbor a weeping willow

Shadow’s worth of longing for those cloaked

Turns and straightaways, or that swampy

South Mississippi was ever half as tragic

As I dreamed it could be, but that I still cruise

From time to time in the dope-ripe

Ford Fairlane of the mind where nothing

Has changed, where we remain hopelessly

Stoned devotees of the TOWN OF LEAKESVILLE

Emblazoned upon the graffitied water tower’s

Testimonies to love. We believed speed

Would save us, would take us fast

And far away from the junkyard wrecks

Stacked in their mile-long convoy to nowhere.

And though losing the way should

Have seemed the worst of divine betrayals,

We took it as a minor fall from grace,

Tail-spun over the embankment rail, rocking

That flung steel body down as if to play

A barre-chord on the barbed-wire fence.

I’ll never know what angelic overseer

Was bored and on duty that night, but we

Rose up and climbed out of the warped last

Breath of that car, no one with so much

As a scratch on his head, not a drop

Of beer spilt, and the radiator hissing

Like a teapot in hell when someone yelled

She’s gonna blow! and each of us

Standing there, starving for something more,

Something other than the back wheel

Spinning that sudden dark, cricketed quiet.

My Psychic

has a giant hand

diagrammed in front of her place

on West Tennessee.

It towers above a kudzu hill as if

to offer a cosmic How!

as in Hello! from a long

way off, as in how

she already knows

the sundry screwed up ways a day

can go days before

I park my wreck on the hill again beside

her white Mercedes. O

little slice of Lebanon!

O cedar scented

cards fanned like feathers

of a Byzantine peacock! Tell

me again how I

might have been a fine lawyer, that I’ll raise

four kids in Tallahassee, how

I married—it’s true—on

my lunch break—Yez

she took you to lunch

okay a zeven year lunch ha ha!

Incense. Mini-shrine.

A wagon train of chihuahuas snoozing by

her slippers. You have anxious

about a future…I do. But

lately I’ve grown cold,

unconsoled by her

extrasensory view. I think

—no need to speak—across

the black tabletop, I don’t want to know

if I’ll find a bright city,

a room by the river, a love

I will recognize

by her dragonfly

tattoo. O narrative of ether!

O non-refundable

life facts! say that what happens may not matter,

or that it matters as any

story does when two fresh lovers

embrace the old pact

(her bra on the chair,

his socks in the kitchen) that says

their love is level,

unfabled, new. Level with me, tell me why

the dogs on the floor, little

moon-fed hounds of Delphi, seem

so over it, so

done with the fleas of

destiny. Maybe that’s the right

attitude, no need

to ask why I’m here on a perfectly blue

Friday, content with

what the thin air, what the dust

motes in the light say

near the high window. I

should’ve learned that music long ago—

O soundless number!

O jukebox of being that the dogs dream to! No

faux crystal ball, no tea leaves

or terrace in the nether

reaches of my palm

will make her answers

less like hocus pocus in a purchased dark.

It’s time to pay, to drive away

from telepathic altitudes, to say adieu

to why love ends. How

a heart opens again. Why

anything is true.