Three Poems + Cyanotypes by Nicole Stockburger
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THE WORD
Cicadas—so much talking.
Although, summer. Although, waiting for rain.
In response, you said if you were alone you'd be fine.
The air was dry as a bone—the deer, buzzard-picked.
God said, go forth and multiply. The pruning, the cleaning—
all to leave a piece of myself here?
I say, if I live in that house with you, have your babies,
it's all too neatly tied. I say,
I'm making copies of myself to fill in the holes,
wringing my hands after a day's work—
the run-off is what I have to show for my body.
My body you've hardly touched in weeks.
God said, and what about the birds you are running your fingers
through. Yes, I want to speak, that's all.
What have I taken from the earth?
I want to talk about the color yellow for an entire year,
to shift between this reality and another in the breakable
country which gives me all of my masks, holding a tomato sandwich,
juice dripping. The earth loses sounds
as soon as I open my mouth to swallow—
grainy forms start to shimmer where the light once was.
*
YOKE
What it was like then—humid areola
of oak and mothers whispering hymns in a circle of quilts,
relief of stars, shattered by hot pavement.
The way you say roadkill
burns a hole in the night, but I'm too far in the past
to look up—your eyes like ground glass, flipped twice.
In the beginning, hemorrhaging desire, the woods
held what was possible,
what was stolen. Mourning dove, train in the distance.
I too want to give myself fully
to what I don’t understand. This neck made steel
by the memory of fathers killing snakes, sluice of moon
and a shovel bored through. God only
speaks to men like you. In a jar, lightning
bugs and a whole summer's worth of stones.
The unspoken laid out on the porch
like a wet towel. Or burrowed in the clover
under bare feet. Summer sweltered so
loud, I couldn't hear myself think
over the hum of everyone's buried sins.
*
ROUEN
I started worrying all the animals
had to mean something.
Turkey—growth, or lack
there of, open field. Red feathered.
Killdeer, bird with shrill bullet
for an evening call. The seam was hardly
visible, but still existed—dogwood bloom,
pink or yellow. I opened myself to color
like a bruise on the knee the next day,
replaced by other versions of itself.
The animals flood the woods with feathers,
dust, skin when I come closer
to study the skeleton of the deer in parts—
skull full of holes, ribcage the length
of a row of irises. Over two years,
Monet painted Rouen Cathedral
in various seasons and times of day,
but always at the same angle,
then showed the gallery twenty
portraits of light—
but I want them all at once, in order
of the making, pasted up on the wall.
Rouen sounds like ruin—what we have done
to the earth—or calm rain, also
a construction. What might the light
be on your shoulder at the breakage?
I started worrying all the animals
wouldn't be remembered as they really are.
*
Cyanotype Artist Statement:
I am interested in looking at animals, plants, and insects that seem to be ubiquitous, and thus, not worthy of saving, and focusing on the meaningfulness of encounters with them. The cyanotypes from Re: Deer are contact-prints of a fawn's skeleton and the surrounding plant life where it was found, as well as the insects landing on the paper, wind slightly shifting the objects, and the quality of sunlight. In this way, these cyanotypes are also a collaboration with the land. The white shapes result from the objects, and their shadows, touching the paper, leaving absences as their record.
