south of north I and II of IV

8/6/2019 south of north I and II of IV

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/south-of-north-i-and-ii-of-iv 1/13

south of north: poems 2002-2004By Angie T. Jeffreys

originally approved in earlier form as a departmental honors thesis at Hollins University 2004

Parts I & II of IV

I. bellis perennia

bellis perennia

We were children avoiding sidewalk cracks,

swallowing eyes that grew like weeds in pavement.

Yellow irises rooted in our stomachs sleeping.

There's a sinful pleasure in eating weeds

when you call them flowers: grind the petals

into fine powder between your teeth,

let the center slip through and onto

tongue intact. We like to hide from

each other from behind closed lids--nothing

but white, frayed petals.

I've spotted these English daisies lately,

catching in open palms everything that slips through,

because they're only fingers with no hands.

I plucked one from the side of the road,

and it left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

snapshot of a sundried city

That evening, he said he stood on a building like a cliff,

painted the industrial district into iridescent

retina like a carbon-paper copy.

Greensboro pixilated with a high-gloss finish,

swimming through exhaust and factory dirt.



Windows open to gasp

for air, swallowing curls of black

As they flung open and slammed themselves shut.

The day was a long summer swollen with idle humidity.

I kept picking up my feet, soles melting onto hot asphalt; later a trail of sticky footprints

through the crab grass home.

He gave me a print of that photograph,

a city pressed like a corsage between

thick glass and cardboard backing.

I trace the rest beside it on my white wall.

Paint chips lodge and bleed in my skin.

pathological daguerreotypist

"it is the first time that the rays of the sun were ever caught on this continent,

and imprisoned in all their glory and beauty, in a morocco case, with golden

clasps.". Morning Herald New York, September 30 1839

I want to preserve that image, a look of a moment in your

Eye where I saw a perfect reflection of myself:

the vapored gaze that concaved me into three-dimensional

object imprisoned against wall.

There were security-cameras with no tape inside. In the morning, knowing

looks of the night man aside - I want a picture,

and photography doesn't exist anymore.

Daguerre suggests a scientific process in which we

recreate nature: a photographic drawing of carnal instinct.

Rent a studio. Construct from blueprints.

There was this bead of sweat, hanging from your

face last night. It would look nice plated in silver.

You insist there's nothing exhibitionist aboutthis, standing on the other side of

our contraption. You say we're a portrait with no composition.

But this is a primitive art form to me, and we

Become entangled again under an iodine blanket.

A ball of mercury hangs from your



face as the temperature rises, and we steadily duplicate

ourselves from mirror to mirror to sheet.

I'll have to repaint the blue in your eyes. We're

two sad sisters, staring from a box with gold clasps.

or I could sell hearts on the black market

Sometimes i do want to take that heart,

heavy-resting and slick on palm:

fat from arteries swollen,

and watch it melt in my lifelines.

One ice-cream scoop on august

Street. And run off the cracks

to floors and storm drains.That's the closest I ever want

to be: the rescue of it

from him, to collect remnants and

donate to science or another black market.

It's the best thing I could do

for me. They stress-test the collar

bone, and add timepieces metallic

beat-keep but I want to crack through

Sternum, dig out

and take his tempo between thumbs

and index fingers because he just lies.

I push the blood, hypnotized by white rooms

white blankets steam-heated for bed.

her body against mine

wait for rain cracks in dry eyes. saturates as we move between shelters.

extending arms stronger than mine, she wrestles with damp limbs me, violently rubs make-up from my face, wraps around herself, wraps me in. we listen to

breath on telephone weave silent through thick static. she maps through me. the

path shrinks from wind-sound, lulls me to sleep with rocks blown against my

forehead. there isn't any point in going inland: the water's still from places I've

never been to touch.



amnesiac wedding dreams

The first thing I could see was your mother and you

Eyes overcast in sad blue

Fumble around long sheet white fabric

Attack with garden sheers and medical needlesNo machine can build that dress for you

Tear the photos from magazines your cousin

Lent last spring but you should wear linen

And breathe the way you like in August

After you called about the wedding I only saw

The scrapbook of Ghana you forgot when you packed

Off your things

The photographs of you

Watching ceremonial smiles white against dark skin

A traditional wedding dress then bodies blurred

In flashes of dancing full color by firelight

I know you heard the two of you in dreams

Mimicking vows in schoolbook English

But you'll stand pale-faced beside Bible this

Summer unwrap the crystal from your registry:

frosted on Irish surfaces of Irish glass I got

You the flutes with two doves because

Clear circles were left instead of eyes.

Poem for Carole after Her Coma

you slept soundly sterile face

hair pressed flat against forehead

we were interrupting your dreams

looking for numbered signs in the sky

out dark gray windows I could only

see the wet eyeliner in my reflection

bruises sliding off my cheeks or are

they the clock-lines that appeared electric

green and disappeared in a deaf bed

this is what home from machines ticks through

body with needles threaded in hands



nurses stab in and rip out from back

I don't sleep in white rooms I hold

my breath in hospitals now and don't

say I'll see you when I wake up anymore

six months back you stood straight mapping the twigs

back on the family tree spine firmly in place.

metallic properties of ice

It's winter again. I think

of icicles broken from porch rails

warmed in my mouth and

disappeared in now chilled saliva.

Water trapped mid-drop arresting in place until I arrive for the harvest.

I don't dream of snow

or sailing downhill anymore.

I'd have to wring wet clothes,

Wait for shoes to quietly dry.

I don't collect ice like it's

diamonds anymore.

Now I sit inside, inhaling

coffee burns it reheatsFrom a pot on the stove, or

I drink burning Chablis in

my chest and throat as it

sails down. I watch me waver

from a mirror.

I see myself, maybe just like me

impaled around an icicle, rusting

It was left in the snow. I dream-cough

blood, orange, thin from

the corners of my bottom lip.



II. domestic arts

8mm films of you or me in 1957

perfectly still on a bench stained

proofed against precipitation

in winter - flickering like a porch light

swinging against drying paint chipsso far uncracked.

You're nine in red everywhere,

body quietly knitted inside.

There's no sound in old family movies,

but I can see you say nothing. I can't

see your teeth brushed in the absence

of treated water.

It's a town painted yellow by dust

sprayed behind dirt roads in flightlike a sandbox storm, clouds roll

like sky-blue Chevrolets.

school picture

you were hair, ironed flat

stiff curls flipping up your

smile without moving

the muscles in your face,

thin neck-skin burns

morning wet hair sizzled against

hot iron like bacon grease does

In your mom's skillet.

Fanned out curls, fried between metal,

terrycloth towel-dried. The smell

suffocated by the aerosol can



spraying your hairspray.

The pink ribbon will look white or

gray in the portrait. Hair brushed

behind your ears, we see those brown

eyes, now black. Your smile hasn't changed.

You contrasted white under eyebrows;

arches sketched with pencil. Cheekbones

turn gray in the flash, shadows reshape

and round your face.

In color, now when photographed,

it's all fluorescent and absent of

shadows. Pictures capture the

integrity of the shot.

lullaby

I can't fall asleep on key

mom sang bird song

scrapped with rhythm

patches, fat with drawl

climbs up tongue

ricochets off

beat of fan blades onstill night air. Songbirds

or shadows flicker they

drop from the ceiling

past the dark but we

can only hear them thud

against the floor. Mom

sings the same song to

Sister in her bed, the same

lines she found between

tobacco leaves and laundry pinned to lines by mom's

helping hand. These lines

fall right out of branches of

family trees, never written

they scuffle down gravel paths

to press your fingers against



hair goodnight. Lyrical

duets splinter in my head

collect wishful deaf maps

that I rattle in my pocket now

They hiss thin notes and paper cuts.

ghost signals

the engagement ring under the

seat of his car weighting stationary

that explained he was almost home

he was tobacco farms off of dirt mile

roads. The truck is parked ironical

at the one crossroads in town

beneath seats rings don't look padlocks

in the eye. They can't change the radio

dial. They don't suffer from fathers

choking through all the vents, suits

closeted in silenced museum partitions

Pressed like paper flowers between each

other. Silverfish crawl through the bed

of the truck, unnoticed by the ring colonies

ignored or just plain forgotten. There aren't

intersections to stop at since roads don't cross

The ring doesn't pay attention to the time. The

ring couldn't see traffic signals that beckon like

sirens' sweet songs.

holding flowers farmer hands

thick vowels follow streets with double

yellow lines. Strip malls fell off the backs

of trucks like beer cans tinkling in



the wind. Gray-walled like factory exhaust

chemicals smoke out the stars after nightfall

He used to dig down deep in the soil or stood

in a happily deserted street. He turned his televisionsToo loud and took pills to sleep through the

racket. His groans would still wake him

up cold-sweating in the night. He cranked

up the volume to his dishwasher and the

washing machine, but his breathe still reeked

He flung tobacco bundles cured inverted in

the barn. Gum drips yellow bouquets

farmers smell their hands, bottle

that brown stained in their nosesheavy and sweet

fathers fall apart

Behind age spots in his eyeballs I can

still see me slowly uninventing forced

to leave him back every day of my life

tears disappear from my cheeks they've

evaporated into walls that will reach a saturation point another time until

the house unbuilds again erase until I

pass in swift pneumonia dreams oxygen

disappears before he's lain clean under

blue still sheets.

domestic artsopen kitchen doorway sterile

counters whitened from the

rest of the house refrigerator

collaged inside candid photographs

smiling in contractions cued by

cameras but you like



to take the pictures developing

the sober smiles each of us bear

with dishwater then dried prints

between the spotty glasses glazescratched off by one fingernail and

you edit out to focus on the white teeth in your

masterpieces

when you can't look yourself

in the eye.

stillbirthI couldn't touch your stomach

cheek to it the way my sister

might with me. I thought you

would look happy after having

given any sort of birth. They threw

it like a paper basketball into a

can, before you'd know safely

behind the biohazard shield

bag red lacing the rim. Piled

inside with latex and other people's

blood. Do you want it to go? The

doctor's only joking. You dream

or did he say that? You find you're

curious how it looks, swum in alcohol

knocking against the glass.

asymmetries in the bedroom

It's a new moon after sunset. But

you see the lamp reflection in the

window, tell me it's full. Or it's still

the sun.

It didn't rain. It wasn't humid.



Your gaze grafted on the window

from the bed. You said the air

spilled over. It boiled.

The moon wasn't anything except

a sheetrock sky. Neighborhoodstreetlights aren't playing tricks

on your eyes.

I count five finger paintings on my arm.

I was sixteen cracked veins and you

told me some things just disappear for

good reason.

stalemate reflections6:53a.m. I watch the ritual

facepainting in the dressing

room. I imagine you'd gathered

together dried roots, crushed

them into dyes with a mortar

and pestle, before you streak

your cheeks with bright and

native colors. Except you don't

glance proudly back into your

reflection on the other side of

the porcelain sink. It doesn't

acknowledge you, either.

Red wax in thick clumps deposit

on your bottom lip, unnoticed.

The tube runs back and forth

and back once more.

Your hands are pink and fatfrom circulating to and from.

These are the hands

as my saline drips in quiet

ticks from the bag or your

eyes if those hands made



me scream when they were

possessed by doctors orders

To rip the gauze, scabbing to

the spine. I sleep to the tempo

Of the tears, as they slap my raw nerves in front of the mirror

I can't recall which one of

you is you.

and you ignore the glass in broken dreams

you thought I was 3 again,from the screams from my dreams

starched stiff into sheets and my nightgown is covered in

blood. I said I was just dreaming about all of the airplanes,

safely reconnecting now with the ground. I had no idea

how a foot length tingle of glass got thrust into my thigh.

I said it looked like an installation. I said I painted my face

black and green while lying flat and still in the dark. I said

I didn't remember getting up to take a stroll or fishing in the

dark, asleep, for keys. This wasn't supposed to be suicide, it

was just a dream. I was crumpled like an aluminum can

in big boats and airplanes. I dreamed I waded through street lit

pools of windshield until you wiped away the bloody spit from

my cheek and tucked me in. I asked if my clothes always did

look so double-jointed on the floor.

empty bedroom

the room fades from yellow crayons intothe dusky shadows of furniture that walks

the same clockwise path around the walls

every day. I know when you've been through,

burning cold through March window light. You

just secured fresh sheets with hospital corners

after changing the linens again this week.



Shadows shake like a silent movie and the fan

rattling from the ceiling. A corner shelf quietly

collapses into self. A china doll's cheek clangs

around inside its head, forgotten. A hurricane blew it down.

Documents

south of north I and II of IV