[These poems, each
containing 5-7 fairly short subsections, are from a manuscript called Shelf Break, which is primarily using
and playing off of nautical terms in a variety of sound-driven ways. (JKD)]
Boundary
1
in
to the binary of
earth and sea-
scape, sealskin a
Bermuda scale
optacon /orangutan
a zoologic prospectus
for animalia of
an inferior future
the writing (amoebic)
folded up
into a desk (disk)
hologram topped with
(dive) zebra-patterned
paper to
winnow the self /
other into
species (who?)
insulates (tied)
to fiction-
2
-alized passion
players, portraiture
portentous diagrams
of the dichromatic
diphthong stuck
on tongue
tonged out
teased away into
sound’s awaiting
susurration
murmur
murder from
gesticulation to
germination:
time
3
victimized / volcanic
vissitudes, voltigen meter
monitor the cross-
hatch, hutch:
watch shift
the verb to noun
tear to tear
read (in the
past) to read a
reed-song of
reel winching
in, pulled up,
caught,
red
4
handed a
loophole gun
whale cannon
fodder for the
fictitious, the
promulgations of
(re) con (de) constructed
Histoires a
mist as in
mystery a
mark of
the
unfinished
5
hold taught
rope-in thrust
and winch and
something about
the waft and
welling, wavelets
which belie the dark-
her swirling
predicated upon
fossilized sternums
uphauled (ended)
alphabets
of the critical
confrontation
triangulated
with the aid
of my (our)
astrolabe Shhhh!
Listen,
closer...
Timber Hitch[1]
1
to chide
to caterwaul
to christen
radiant or rutilated quartz
crystallography—
cartographer’s engraved
maimings of parchment—
trident slaughterhouses
of old files, remnants
or rudimentary stacks
of startled pillars
of the radius
of redundancy
an echo
2
median of misconceptions
misanthropic
mesopelagic tropical
amoebic dysentery
diatribe or troubled
waterways:
spindly motors,
mortar, cracks,
fissures, figments
glint atop the gangway
gate or plate
schlepped up on
deck the
chained the
hauled the
cratered cargo
hold
ruinporn ornamentation
a lapsus
“next to baroque mermaids” DA,
58
Neptune
narwhale
Nebuchadnezzar
3
folkloric trials
survivalist phantasmagoria
heal heard hollows
slip overboard
underseaside faultline
ocean-rifts’ shadowed
reefs, cliffs, welts
swelling over-surface
skin parched crimson
sunburnt blind
instances of hooked
reminiscences: what
is dropped
into the
abyss
resurfaces
4
peal coffin reel
sluice rice prized
out packaging for
import /
export
trails of thunderous
treasure, pirated skies
shimmied upmast
lickety split
to
ex-gondolier
ex-ferryman
ex-dockhand
command new
crew or captain
buccanners, jack
of all trades, plying
wares and wiles
ex-sailmaker
ex-shipfitter
taste of the salty
seas all aboard
on watch
striking
out
swabby
tar
seadog
seafaring
mariners
all
5
cast
asunder / the stories
plunged pike
pumice stoning
their tribal soothsayer
stowaway, whisperer
of wisdom, of voluminous
ages, caretaker shamen of
pagan headshrinkers of
peyote visionaries spiked
pufferfish island
jungle inhabitants mad
forgotten duties
forbidden opening
wracked
body bolted
down to hatch,
to hull, to the wet-
mopped deck
of slippery sentences
written out
in lost tongues
she (I) mouth
incantations
as if / as in
messages sent
over wire
culled cables
in the
cartographer’s
ringing depths
(dis) (rifts) (rafts)
belonging
6
through time /
if time
cyclic discombobulated
minutiae, minutes count
down to, start at
a hundred, sixty,
sextants and astronomers,
logbooks and rolled up
parchment maps, salt
water faded X marking
the spot, an abacus to
calculate, triturate, a
depository’s countenance
continence conservationist
longitude and latitude
tatooed into the skin
that which
is
7
be
longed forth /
forums numeric
de-bugged in the
coding colony, the
colonized decoded
cipher key, pass
word, book lost
hefted up atop a
shelf in some
onland library
atrium within which
the seafarer’s wife
waits and hopes
hides soft
murmuring
susurration of
windsheer seconded
by moontide’s full
rising: inexplicable
elected finite
dreamzone’s echo
tucked within
lost languages’
consonants
herald / hallowed /
homing device
devised preparatory
modules, purgatory
encased outboard
motor running full
throttle to escape
that / this
their / our
her / my
extinction
event
Poetics
statement:
She writes: “As one stands along the shore, the roar
of surf deafens as waves rush over and through each other. The eye attempts to
trace a single wave’s arrival but another seems to catch and suck it under,
adds itself to it, or perhaps it is that a part of it has extricated itself
from itself, becoming a second wavelet, a third. In this manner, the sounds of
words in these 5-7 sub-sectioned nautical term-based poems from a manuscript in
process called Shelf Break stretch
into form from one permutation of themselves to another. Something approaches.
Favoring sound slippages and sound-driven imagery over direct statement or
story, these poems by an Iowan, thus someone who grew up about as far away from
the oceans as is possible, attempt to hear something carried on the water, to
see the waves, a wave, and what it transports to or from, closer or farther
away. These are poems about change, travel, displacement, disruption,
formation. The permutations between (our) pronouns, (our) beings, the
liminality within our aquatic selves.”
Bio:
Jennifer K Dick is the author of three books of
poetry, most recently Lilith: A Novel in Fragments (Corrupt, 2019). Her
collection That Which I Touch Has No Name, including poems in a mixture
of French, Italian and English, is forthcoming in 2020 from Eyewear in London.
The poems published here are from a new work in progress, Shelf Break. Resident in France for the last two decades,
she is the co-founder and director of the well-known Ivy Writers series of
bilingual readings in Paris, and she teaches American Lit and Civ at the Université de Haute
Alsace in Mulhouse.
[1] Timber Hitch: knot formed on spar or other
object by wrapping rope around object and itself (source: Word Menu Dictionary,
\DA: refers to Greek poet Demosthenes
Agrafiotis’ book Maribor tr. John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis, published by Post-Apollo
Press, 2010.
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