Author/Uploaded by Henri Cole
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph I. from The Visible Man Arte Povera White Spine Adam Dying from Chiffon Morning Peonies II. from Middle Earth Icarus Breathing The Hare Kayaks Casablanca Lily Veil Swans Radiant Ivory Black Camellia Landscape with Deer...
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph I. from The Visible Man Arte Povera White Spine Adam Dying from Chiffon Morning Peonies II. from Middle Earth Icarus Breathing The Hare Kayaks Casablanca Lily Veil Swans Radiant Ivory Black Camellia Landscape with Deer and Figure Green Shade Kyushu Hydrangea Crows in Evening Glow Necessary and Impossible Cleaning the Elephant Morning Glory Myself with Cats Pillowcase with Praying Mantis Melon and Insects Insomnia Original Face Mask My Tea Ceremony Fish and Watergrass Olympia Blur III. from Blackbird and Wolf Gulls Oil & Steel Ambulance Maple Leaves Forever Migraine To Sleep The Tree Cutters Birthday Gravity and Center American Kestrel Quarry Homosexuality Haircut Toxicology Poppies Bowl of Lilacs Shaving My Weed Self-Portrait with Red Eyes Embers Wet Apples Beach Walk Eating the Peach Dead Wren Hymn The Lost Bee Bees Mirror City Horse IV. from Touch Solitude: The Tower Shrike Sunflower Mechanical Soft Mosquito Mother Dead Mother Broom Hens Taxidermied Fawn Ulro Pig Hairy Spider Last Words Legend The Flagellation Quai aux Fleurs Orange Hole Sleeping Soldiers Bats Seaweed Passion One Animal Laughing Monster Self-Portrait with Addict Quilt Doll Resistance Away Carwash Myself Departing V. from Blizzard Face of the Bee On Peeling Potatoes Black Mushrooms Lingonberry Jam To a Snail Jelly To the Oversoul The Party Tent At the Grave of Robert Lowell Recycling Paris Is My Seroquel Doves Goya Weeping Cherry Migrants Devouring the Flesh of a Dead Horse Super Bloom Haiku Pheasant On Pride Keep Me Epivir, d4T, Crixivan Ginger and Sorrow Rice Pudding Blizzard Dandelions (III) On Friendship Corpse Pose Man and Kitten Kayaking on the Charles VI. New Poems Mouse in the Grocery ELF-STORAGE Time and Weather Guns Daffodils Glass of Absinthe and Cigarette Vetiver Sow with Piglets Afterword Acknowledgments Index of Titles and First Lines Also by Henri Cole About the Author Newsletter Sign-up Copyright Guide Cover Title Page Dedication I. from The Visible Man Arte Povera Afterword Acknowledgments Index of Titles and First Lines Contents Copyright Start of content Pagebreaks of the print version Cover Page iii v vii 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 75 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 109 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. FOR CLAIRE MALROUX I came from a place with a hole in it, my body once its body, behind a beard of hair. And after I emerged, all dripping wet, heavy drops came out of my eyes, touching its face. I kissed its mouth; I bit it with my gums. I lay on it like a snail on a cup, my body, whatever its nature was, revealed to me by its body. I did not know I was powerless before a strange force. I did not know life cheats us. All I knew, nestling my head in its soft throat pouch, was a hard, gemlike feeling burning through me, like limbs of burning sycamores, touching across some new barrier of touchability. I FROM THE VISIBLE MAN Arte Povera In the little garden of Villa Sciarra, I found a decade of poetry dead. In the limestone fountain lay lizards and Fanta cans, where Truth once splashed from The Source. How pleased I was and defiant because a dry basin meant the end of description & rhyme, which had nursed and embalmed me at once. Language was more than a baroque wall-fountain. Nearby, a gas-light shone its white-hot tongue, a baby spat up—the stomach’s truthtelling— a mad boy made a scene worthy of Stalin. Ah, to see the beast shitting in its White Spine Liar, I thought, kneeling with the others, how can He love me and hate what I am? The dome of St. Peter’s shone yellowish gold, like butter and eggs. “My God,” I prayed anyhow, as if made in the image and likeness of Him. Nearby, a handsome priest looked at me like a stone; I looked back, not desiring to go it alone. The college of cardinals wore punitive red. The white spine waved to me from his white throne. Being in a place not my own, much less myself, I climbed