Claire Crowther
A GOD IN ASCENT
Slip off, old body, push down, pull away, ripe
for the disembody.
Slip off, old body, push down, pull away, rip.
I’ve assented. Discharged. Some part
will groan into space…
I’m clicking through
my million variants of analysis and decision,
clearer for the detach.
The sky is asserting its blinds, now sun and now night.
Body, you’ve been roughened up by your journey.
Battered by atmospheres. You couldn’t have gone further.
But this svelte self … is it disassembling or freeing up
for the disembody?
LECTURING HUBBLE AT DISNEY
Edwin Hubble, physicist, consulted with Walt Disney and lectured his staff during the making of Fantasia
Watch us draw a real Walt out
of a giant painted shape.
For we can’t put our brushes down and listen to your lecture.
Cartoonists Animators
Illustrators! They’re allowed
new science. We Ink and Paint women must keep covering line’s
vacant spaces. Disney says
we don’t earn enough to stop
and learn. We considered running naked into your lecture.
You tell your own fantasies.
Your dreams are called nebulae.
Could we move you with our living bodies as we move your mind?
Instead we drew out our facts
through fabric to wake you, wood-
en boy. We know the kiss of story helps you stay asleep through
our suffering so we show
how decoration rages
to dictatorship. Beauty is full of fiery languages:
embroidery, knitting, lace-
work, crochet. Silently we
wear our wealth of coverage, should you look. While by hand we can’t
embroider – we are rarely
at home – yet fine stitchery
is roller printed on our dresses. This is how wishing works:
an engraved copper plate curves
round a cylinder.
We’re told we’re rich enough to buy film tickets. So our heels rise.
We teeter. Had we released
ourselves before you from tight
corsets, bras – daily, they’re so difficult, reaching round the back to
unclip – would you have taken
a lecture from small quick flesh?
We know you follow the hoops of cloth-law – don’t physicists
chase the material? Cloth
ripples with pressures that move
on technologies of love, its alterations make
sutures of our hopes, hems and
broad hips of future trouser.
We painted the plain skirts of Sleeping Beauty while we wore more.
GETTING THERE ON THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR
What have I done?
I started by lifting coffins.
Turned to fighting drought fires.
What have I done?
They replaced my knee. My leg
crawls with a million bugs.
What have I done?
What have you done?
Adorable kids lean over
the top of my seat: Say, your hair
is red. It wasn’t this morning.
What have you done?
Do it all.
We’ll drive to the Rockies next time.
If I climb up to that bunk, I’ll fall.
Do it all.
Look at the queue in the corridor,
every one bumping the wall.
We know who does what.
Another long white road. More blue
clapboard. Open fronts.
We know who does what.
Doing is not enough.
I drive twenty minutes to prison.
Mother said don’t chase the highway.
We crossed between trucks.
Our robins are bigger than yours and fat and friendly.
How do you do?
O simple train
sauntering
past gridless guts
immaculate
pipes every shade
of dirty white.
Why are we doing this?
don’t wait on
an oil flow
coiled snakes, curve-
backs, sidewi-
nders, backbi-
ters, unstop-
ping thickness-
es and short-
nesses and
slicknesses
Why are we doing this?
We hope no one will talk politics
in the observation car
or knows what today will shove
in the face of the Zephyr.
Are we ready?
Are we?
Let’s get this port open.
There goes the chemo.
What have you
What have you
What have you done?
Pain meds damaged my liver.
What have I
What have I
What have I done?
We’re swaying like trees in the wind.
Why are we
Why are we
Why are we doing this?
But let me tell you first,
don’t walk on unfenced ground.
We know
We know
We know why.
Slip off, old body, push down, pull away, ripe
for the disembody.
Slip off, old body, push down, pull away, rip.
I’ve assented. Discharged. Some part
will groan into space…
I’m clicking through
my million variants of analysis and decision,
clearer for the detach.
The sky is asserting its blinds, now sun and now night.
Body, you’ve been roughened up by your journey.
Battered by atmospheres. You couldn’t have gone further.
But this svelte self … is it disassembling or freeing up
for the disembody?
LECTURING HUBBLE AT DISNEY
Edwin Hubble, physicist, consulted with Walt Disney and lectured his staff during the making of Fantasia
Watch us draw a real Walt out
of a giant painted shape.
For we can’t put our brushes down and listen to your lecture.
Cartoonists Animators
Illustrators! They’re allowed
new science. We Ink and Paint women must keep covering line’s
vacant spaces. Disney says
we don’t earn enough to stop
and learn. We considered running naked into your lecture.
You tell your own fantasies.
Your dreams are called nebulae.
Could we move you with our living bodies as we move your mind?
Instead we drew out our facts
through fabric to wake you, wood-
en boy. We know the kiss of story helps you stay asleep through
our suffering so we show
how decoration rages
to dictatorship. Beauty is full of fiery languages:
embroidery, knitting, lace-
work, crochet. Silently we
wear our wealth of coverage, should you look. While by hand we can’t
embroider – we are rarely
at home – yet fine stitchery
is roller printed on our dresses. This is how wishing works:
an engraved copper plate curves
round a cylinder.
We’re told we’re rich enough to buy film tickets. So our heels rise.
We teeter. Had we released
ourselves before you from tight
corsets, bras – daily, they’re so difficult, reaching round the back to
unclip – would you have taken
a lecture from small quick flesh?
We know you follow the hoops of cloth-law – don’t physicists
chase the material? Cloth
ripples with pressures that move
on technologies of love, its alterations make
sutures of our hopes, hems and
broad hips of future trouser.
We painted the plain skirts of Sleeping Beauty while we wore more.
GETTING THERE ON THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR
What have I done?
I started by lifting coffins.
Turned to fighting drought fires.
What have I done?
They replaced my knee. My leg
crawls with a million bugs.
What have I done?
What have you done?
Adorable kids lean over
the top of my seat: Say, your hair
is red. It wasn’t this morning.
What have you done?
Do it all.
We’ll drive to the Rockies next time.
If I climb up to that bunk, I’ll fall.
Do it all.
Look at the queue in the corridor,
every one bumping the wall.
We know who does what.
Another long white road. More blue
clapboard. Open fronts.
We know who does what.
Doing is not enough.
I drive twenty minutes to prison.
Mother said don’t chase the highway.
We crossed between trucks.
Our robins are bigger than yours and fat and friendly.
How do you do?
O simple train
sauntering
past gridless guts
immaculate
pipes every shade
of dirty white.
Why are we doing this?
don’t wait on
an oil flow
coiled snakes, curve-
backs, sidewi-
nders, backbi-
ters, unstop-
ping thickness-
es and short-
nesses and
slicknesses
Why are we doing this?
We hope no one will talk politics
in the observation car
or knows what today will shove
in the face of the Zephyr.
Are we ready?
Are we?
Let’s get this port open.
There goes the chemo.
What have you
What have you
What have you done?
Pain meds damaged my liver.
What have I
What have I
What have I done?
We’re swaying like trees in the wind.
Why are we
Why are we
Why are we doing this?
But let me tell you first,
don’t walk on unfenced ground.
We know
We know
We know why.
© Copyright Claire Crowther 2020
Claire Crowther’s latest collection Solar Cruise was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2020. She is deputy editor of Long Poem Magazine.
