Invocation

To celebrate the paperback publication of Exposure, I am sharing a poem from the book, which Annie finds in Juliette’s journal from college.

I adapted this poem for Exposure from one of my own that I wrote when I was a student at the University of Chicago, and I wanted to share a couple of others from the same series. When I first found and revisited these college poems—from almost 20 years ago!—I was surprised by how much they still felt like me—how much the themes and language and imagery were familiar in some bone deep way.

Assemblage of Echo

I.

She goes through her boxes of shadows. Roots

breaking through the floor slats, she lays out

a shadow of her mother, a shadow

of a dahlia, a shadow of the afternoon

she spent floating out to sea. She hangs

a shadow of herself over the window. She finds

that she is full of blindfolds. Leaning into later on,

when it will matter that she is still young,

she glimpses the milk in her mouth.

See, there is no way out—

II.

The footsteps rattle above- someone’s up on the rooftop

again. Marie would have preferred rain

in her hair to anything else. Little Marie

would prefer it if you didn't turn on the lights,

please. Clouds of marigold smoke

roll overhead. Marie turns

against the moonbeams, replaced

by the sound of birds migrating

through a storm. She opens her smallest box,

pulling out the shadow she had managed to save.

III.

Marie, don't collapse like this-

Who would she see if she went into the lonely town?

The sandman setting up his machines,

or the fawn drifting off

in the park. Morning's lonely silhouettes,

as she becomes someone else.

Worlds Less Weatherable

I watch her wonderingly,

half naked, as the ghost of a camera

whirs in the dimness, her manifold mercies

collecting at the back,

and odd phenomenon of the desert

patrolling its patch of sky. We spend our lives

running from houses more enduring

than bronze, and worlds less weatherable.

When shadows begin to loosen their hold,

she walks in the sleep of herself

and waits, like some endless

rosary of the mind. I need someone

to stanch my dreams. The chill deepens

into unease. It looks as if the clouds

have already got some kind of lasso around the moon.

Invocation

They ask me my name, and I respond

with a fist full of trinkets. Marie,

I’m choked. So tell me

about your treasures,

and we’ll let morning come to us

on its own. You know, I wreck myself

all the time. The dog star comes

barking at my window

late into the evening,

bringing me pieces of the past in his jaws.