PAULETTE BEETE / 4 POEMS
And Then Something Broke
(Poem found in several interviews with the actor Michael Fassbender)
1
Damn the consequences of trying to open myself up:
the repulsive, the naked, the dark.
We’re supposed to follow certain etiquette and behave.
I’m just gonna look at things without the sugar coating.
We have all these voids we try to fill in different ways.
I want to provoke intimacy, see what happens
when people break.
2
I find myself knotted, an intense
threesome with you, me, sheer hope.
My delirium at you unexpected.
It’s what you represent:
the ability to slip my skin
like a comic book mutant, morph
my tragically human rendering
to something different, honest, good.
it’s such a clichéd thing to say, but it’s true.
3
People do it: delve into the rift between hunger
and desire.
It’s like a little dance.
I recognize I have been somewhat unraveled.
There should be no boundaries.
We should break out of our secrets.
You are the doctor. I am patient.
4
My secret is how I hunger entanglement but
I’m frightened of getting intimate.
For years I’ve been numb--
waiting for love like it’s a light switch.
Which one of us is Rochester?
Which one of us is Jane Eyre?
I improvise myself in you.
It is you I believe in.
5
Passion can near-ghost a woman steeped
in fury and martyrdom.
I train like a boxer, whittling down
anger to vulnerability, anguish to charm.
It’s a bit weird to look at myself
in this golden fish tank,
shrunk to a smoldering passel of devotion.
I approach love like a night job
unloading a warehouse of hunger.
I want to keep myself.
I want to escape you.
6
Our passion is fierce, obsessive, sane.
Vulnerability is an onerous responsibility.
So much depends on luck:
who you meet,
how you are received.
I want you to look at me and see my hunger.
I want to be very pleased that we’ve found each other.
An Artist’s Possessions
after “Manifesto” by Marina Abramovic
Buddhists, O’Hara, and Brooks advise that it is best to have 9 possessions in your life:
1 robe for the summer tailored to hold lightning strikes
1 robe for the winter and lopsided love affairs
1 pair of shoes, never worn, caked with red earth from your grandmother’s grave
1 begging bowl for food and mercy
1 mosquito net
1 prayer book in the secret language that sleeps in God’s mouth
1 regret
1 mat to sleep on
1 pair of glasses, cracked
An artist should decide for herself the minimum personal possessions she should have. The artist should inscribe herself with combative lists of what she doesn’t have. Of what she needs to have in order to lose it.
An artist should know loss, should reek of it. An artist should split open when touched in the right order at the right time with the right instrument.
An artist should have more and more and less and less.
An artist should have more and more and less and less.
An artist should have more and more and less and less.
Love and Rubble
Weren’t you the one who wanted the house on the hill, who insisted the body was also geography? This was our love story. As LIFE magazine once called it—our “mud and rubble.”
(Cue sharp sounds of heel hitting wood.)
“Ma’am the tour starts here,” someone said, pointing to the distance: I emptied out.
You are always seeking my spine, zipper of skin and bone. You hold me as if we are two people.
(Scenario 1: Hang three screen prints side by side—same verticality, same velocity. Hide as much as you can in the negative space between paintings. Like footsteps.)
(Scenario 2: Hide the flowers among the untitled works on the wall. Hide the monster among the flowers. Lie on your stomach, look up into the past.)
I am tired of interpretation and the forgiveness it demands. Your sins glow neon. I embroider mine into yours. I have the chalk, the caution tape, the wisecrack. When do we start the autopsy?
I try to understand your obsession with maps. I try to remember all the blessings you’ve charted on my behalf.
Your gaze feels all wrong; it makes me laugh.
The conventional metaphors: a web, a maze, the road as it is plowed.
The conventional epithets: brute, savage, mapmaker, beloved.
(Editors Note: Make some type of detailed plan for knowing who to believe. Use colored ink or fingerprints.)
Do you remember when we were prehistoric? That moment before ‘hello,’ before we’d
corrupted the clay? There are some areas in which you can see what’s underneath. I don’t know how to describe it except to say it’s skin.
Some things are in front of others. When you stand in front of us you can see the distance.
Spider-eyes you call me. My forlorn little elephant. I am like the factory whistle, you whisper.
Dear Friend: Please rip up this envelope before you read the letter. I do not believe it’s a security envelope but you can use one hand to treat it as such.
I admit you fool me sometimes. I give the same word multiple meanings depending on the length of the sentence, your mood, the general sentiment of the crowd. There are few things I bother to print carefully. I understand erasure.
Collaged in part from wall text, painting titles, and overheard conversations at Phillips Collection exhibit on Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet
Advice for the Lovelorn
Language is not as sturdy as it would like you to believe. Never use the words love or grief in a poem. They will never hold who you want them to. Dare to say the unsayable only if your conscience knows alchemy. Stop writing about your father. Stop breaking your heart to write a different ending for the dead. Understand that tenderness is a type of forgiveness. Understand that tenderness is not the same as forgiveness. Confess even what you don’t remember. Your memory is neither faulty nor at fault. Try to tongue kiss yourself with exquisite kindness. None of that dart and dive nonsense. None of that clumsiness. Never look at the poem or in a mirror while writing. Write as if your heart is mending. Keep something holy in your mouth at all times.
Paulette Beete's poems, short stories, and personal essays have appeared in journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Provincetown Arts, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among many others. She is also the author of the chapbooks Blues for a Pretty Girl and Voice Lessons. Her work has previously been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she has been a Winter Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She also blogs (occasionally) at thehomebeete.com, and you can find her on Twitter as @mouthflowers.