Patty Seyburn
Patty Seyburn was born in 1962 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University, an MFA in Creative Writing from University of California at Irvine, and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Field, New England Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, Quarterly West, Seneca Review, Swink, Third Coast, and other journals. Seyburn is the author of two books of poems, Diasporadic (Helicon Nine, 1998), winner of the American Library Association’s 2000 Notable Book Award, and Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002). Coeditor of the poetry journal Pool, she lives in Newport Beach, California, and teaches literature and creative writing courses at the University of Southern California.
The Alphabetizer Speaks
I have my reasons
have never known starvation nor plenitude
and unless the order of the world
changes, I won’t.
If the order of the world changes, I will
disappear, the way some vowels
elide into their word-bodies
or an individual blade recedes
into a field each season.
Will my daughter carry on this way?
I cannot yet tell her qualities—
if she prefers scale to chance, sequence to random.
And this may mean nothing.
I find chaos theory appealing, and eavesdrop on talk
of black holes, chasms, any abyss
that fetters sense. I relish
the desultory in many matters,
am slovenly, a slacker, a slave to caprice.
Except with the letters.
There is such thing as a calling
though I cannot speak for prophets or martyrs.
I have been summoned
by people of stature and the low-stationed,
comrade and debutante alike.
My eyes suffer, and my hands, my back.
I am my profession. It is no whim.
I do not want the world a certain way.
The world is that way, and I am a vehicle
on the road of nomenclature. I tend the road.
In my dream, all events coterminous—
no linear narrative, preceding or next.
The odd vignette, lone scene, an image
in isolation, no neighbors.
Then I awaken and pace
my thin balcony, calculating
how much of me waits above, how much
lives below, and I pose
the question of balance. My name
cues the turn home.
First Bookshelf
There is a duck lost at sea when
his crate breaks after the boat is
destroyed. Tossed, overturned,
claimed and buoyed by a frigid
ocean, he observes the moon and
stars, knows loneliness, isolation
and lack of purpose. He wonders
if he’ll find a home. There is a
monkey who makes countless,
thoughtless errors and manages
to redeem himself with friendly,
anonymous counsel. He makes
great messes and never seems
to gain an awareness of what
others endure on his behalf. He
is not held accountable for his
mistakes. A royal elephant has
appropriate adventures and an
extended family. A huge dog
with morals means well but his
size often inhibits his ability to
reach his goals. He frequently
learns to compensate for his errs
by giving rides, providing shelter,
protecting the meek. There is a
mouse with balletic grace, while
her tiny cousin has nothing but luck
and the charm of the weak: you
can’t choose your family. There is
another mouse, crudely drawn in
primary colors, whose exploits are,
at best, prosaic. She keeps company
with an elephant, an alligator, and
a female of ambiguous species.
She drives a bus, cleans house,
bakes gingerbread, takes a bath,
attends the fair. She is middle class.
And yet another mouse, with many
paid friends and a girlfriend, sister
or cousin, also paid. They used to
keep silent but have, of late, learned
language, which has increased their
popularity but drained the pathos
from their exploits. A company of
pigs, an obdurate spider, a ravenous
caterpillar that endures change and
sheep: lost, defiant, naked. The duck
story is somewhat true except that
we are given the duck’s perspective,
which must be questioned, as we have
no small stake in believing that we
are the only ones who understand
that we exist, with little notion of why.
What I Disliked About the Pleistocene Era
The pastries were awfully dry.
An absence of hummingbirds—
of any humming, and birds’ lead
feathers made it difficult to fly.
Clouds had not yet learned
to clot, billow, represent.
Stars unshot, anonymous.
Moon and sun indifferent.
No one owned a house, a pond,
a rock on which to rest your head.
No are, no here then there. Beginning
meant alive. The end was dead.
Art still a ways away—no lyre.
Beauty, an accident. Needs
and wants bundled like twigs
then set on fire. Except, no fire.
Candles had no wicks. Fruit
lacked seed. Books bereft of plot.
Ornament and condiment
were empty cisterns. There were pots.
It was pure act. No motivation,
consequence, imagination.
Sometimes, a flare, a glow, a gleam.
No questions asked. No revelation.
And I was not yet capital I.
Still just an eye. No mouth,
no verb, no AM to carry dark
from day, dirt or sea from sky—
God not God until one dove
called out “where the hell’s dry land?”
An answer formed. A raven shrugged
and toed a line across the sand.
New, the sand. New, the vast
notion of this long division.
New, the understanding that
this time, there would be no revision.