what to make of it,
for instance,
before a smile –
all this waiting
in a single moment
falling away into
her eyes, and her
hands touching the
counter, lightly
as if playing
for the first time
before she says
can she help me?
by Chris Woodhull
Tag Archives: Chris Woodhull
besieged
i am in
a crowd
of selves
talking and
telling,
standing
to close
i step back
my arms open:
a kind of
untethering,
resignation
letting go as they say,
drifting from the
shore, (what shore?)
unmoored into –
languor? buoyancy?
alone:
it all grows still
unknown, irresponsible,
not responsible
at sea
after days it occurs
to me
the only
thing left to do
is slip from the boat
and into my body.
(second attempt)
i used to court
sadness like
a lover
sinewy and
sensuous
beguiling
everything i wanted
we went
everywhere
together
i believed
everything
i gave her
a place
but she is gone
and that made
me sad
in another way
a beauty
uprooted
a possession, a toy
my keeping kept
something from growing
(final attempt)
she is back
in my life
unrecognizable
though not
as sadness
as someone else,
not sure who.
chris woodhull
befuddled
Out of bed
with the feeling
i had left
already
making it
twice in one day
i awake with
out a clue
where to find
my next self
sleeping again.
chris woodhull
out of nowhere
some days, the words
find me or i
find them and
they may or
may not open
the hatch,
the secret opening,
the place where
God is said
to be.
who made the hatch?
in one side, out the other
and back again.
forgetting the hatch
i am free.
chris woodhull
as if it mattered
the night tears away
like a match, billowing
and booming in
movie stills —
the mind, a hand turning
images, sepia
and azure blue.
something slips on nights
as these, the track of being?
i sat in the car all night
nearly frozen, alone
surrounded by the machinery
of worry –
she had left
this storm is dark, I am
a character looking for a line –
what is the meaning
of this storm and rain
and why is my mind
fixed on it?
as if it mattered.
poem by chris woodhull / art by mark rothko
solvitur ambulando
never lose track
of your shoe-
laces in the
hand securing
the knot guided
by the eye
from above.
chris woodhull
je suis
you
the invisible
who-ness
is present, bidden or
not bidden, so
i admit to feeling
(you prefer
lower case i’m guessing?
i do)
your nearness,
much more
than God – is that your father:
enormous, cliff-
like, unknowable shore line
everywhere and nowhere
or did i make him up? – and
you remain unseen yet noticeable
and quiet, as a young
girl, painfully shy
supine?
and here:
are you the swing? are you the hush?
are you the dusk
light, and why is your name such
a problem? i admit to feeling un-
comfortable with it
in public,
aloud
i don’t mind thinking it
je suis is as close as i get
why do you keep
showing up discernibly concealed?
what did you learn as a human? and
what do you continue to learn as a
God-formerly-human-yet-still-human-but-waiting-
for-something-i-don’t-understand-to-happen?
you are
the missing
person who
i look for
everywhere
in a stadium
crowd, far off,
other side of field
eye contact
we locate each
other, impossible
to talk, we wave,
sort of, our
gaze in a
pause
held in that
small holiness
just seeing you is
seeing me
you are the being in
a person without a
body, right? though in a
body, is that it?
that certain near-thing
we know is distinct
and unique
in me
here
like being in your own car, your own pew,
your own bed
how am i
doing so
far
stop me if
i’m going
to
fast
poem by chris woodhull / photograph by kumiko ishigaki
for days now
for days now
i awake in
emptiness —
not unlike
fear, a kind of
vacancy
as if
flying
above an ocean
with no map or
navigation, only
fuel enough for
the remainder of
life and
the silent sclaffing
sound of the
propellor
the sea, a flat
horizontal of mottled
filigree, blue in green
spread between
air and floor
why remain in flight?
what is this in me that wants
to wait and see?
chris woodhull
wonder
sometimes in the day,
sometimes at night
I walk outside and in,
all around the wooded property
not looking for anything
in particular, nothing really
but this and that, hoping,
no, not hoping: wondering
if the incessant searching
or hunting or waiting
for something to happen,
to move, from beneath
the thing I call my life,
will give it buoyancy.
chris woodhull
Monks & Mannequins 