Quipu

By Arthur Sze

- In suppport of his last book of poems, he was a guest on NPR's "Fresh Air" for a long interview - Arthur has become a well-known poet, winning prizes, getting reviewed in national magazines (The New Yorker), and serving on prize committees - Quipo is Copper Canyon's fourth book from Arthur Sze - Sze is a staff favorite

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781619321038

Book preview

Before Sunrise

The myriad unfolds from a progression of strokes —

one, ice, corpse, hair, jade, tiger.

Unlocking a gate along a barbed-wire fence,

I notice beer cans and branches in the acequia.

There are no white pear blossoms by the gate,

no red poppies blooming in the yard,

no Lepiota naucina clustered by the walk,

but—bean, gold—there’s the intricacy of a moment

when—wind, three-legged incense cauldron —

I begin to walk through a field with cow pies

toward the Pojoaque River, sense deer, yellow, rat.

I step through water, go up the arroyo, find

a dark green magpie feather. This is a time

when—blood in my piss, ache in nose and teeth —

I sense tortoise, flute where there is no sound,

wake to human bones carved and strung into a loose apron.

Earthshine

1

"Fuck you, fuck you," he repeated as he drove down the dirt road

while tamarisk branches scraped the side of the pickup;

what scrapes in the mind as it dilates to darkness?

Jodido, he winced and turned up the whites of his eyes;

What comes from darkness, I strike with darkness;

who hears a night-blooming cereus

unfold a white blossom by the windowsill?

crackle of flames in the fireplace;

lapping of waves against rocks

as a manta ray flips and feeds on plankton;

the gasp when he glanced down at the obituaries;

the gasp when she unwrapped flecked rice paper to find a letterpress broadside;

spurt of match into gold as he lights white beeswax candles;

she is running her hair between his toes;

he is rubbing her nipples with his palms;

What comes from brightness, I strike with brightness;

his ankles creaked as he tiptoed to the bathroom;

waking to a cat chewing on a mouse in the dark.

2

Hiking up a trail in the Manoa Valley arboretum,

he motions with his hand to stop as he tries

to distinguish whether a red-whiskered or

red-vented bulbul has just landed on a branch.

I spot a macadamia nut on the ground, glance

up into an adjacent tree and am shocked by

two enormous jackfruit suspended from the trunk.

Revelation never comes as a fern uncoiling

a frond in mist; it comes when I trip on a root,

slap a mosquito on my arm. We go on, but stop

when gnats lift into a cloud as we stumble into

a bunch of rose apples rotting on the ground.

Although we continue to a dead end where water

runs down a sheer rock, the mind stops here:

here Amanita muscarias release a cloud of spores

into cool August air; here lovers make

earthshine on a waxing crescent moon; here

the phone rings and I learn of a suicide,

a pinhole grows into an eclipse; here

water drips as I descend into a sloping black lava tube.

3

Say teeth;

say gnawed his teeth in his sleep;

say each spring he scraped peeling blue paint off the windowsill;

say the ocean flickers;

say a squiggly chalk line screeching down a blackboard opens a black rift;

say on a float house yellow cedar smoke rises in the woodstove;

say burn;

say crumpled white papers ripple then burst into yellow twists of flame;

say parallel lines touch in the infinite;

say peel;

say stoplight screech go green laugh;

say screech,