What Are You Reading (Actually On A!) Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson.
So, I bought this aaaaaages ago and then my aging computer and ereader stopped playing nicely together, so I had it sitting on my computer and was unable to actually read it. Which was immensely frustrating. New shiny tablet, however, let me download it and I am now reading it and I am loving it. There is assumed bisexuality and polyamory and it is about the power and role of art and how technology and life interact.

What did you recently finish reading?

Nineteen Seventy Four (Red Riding Quartet, #1), by David Pearce.
I was enjoying this when I wrote my last Reading Wednesday post and then I carried on reading it and got sort of progressively less thrilled. The problem is that it was very true to its particular setting and time, and that is just miserable. So so so much sexual violence - which, I know, hasn't gone away, but written perfectly for the 70s in the North and it was just grim. Maybe not the sort of book to finish reading when your mother has just died and your emotions are raw? I might read the others in the quartet at some point in the future but right now I'm not actively seeking them out.

Funeral Games, by Mary Renault.
I did enjoy this, even though it broke my heart a few times. What was fascinating was seeing how fractured the book was, and its characters were once the centralising, organising, charismatic force of Alexander was gone. The memory of him and his style of leadership only carries people so far and then it all disintegrates.

Merivel: A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain.
I can't make up my mind about this. There were parts of it that I felt did work and worked very well, and then parts that seemed incredibly indulgent and a bit ploddy or just unnecessary - there's a strange sexual encounter in a cart that served very little purpose. But, for fluffy historical fiction it was fine.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I was hoping that the answer to this would be Kate Atkinson's latest, A God in Ruins which is a semi-sequel to Life After Life, which I loved. But! I just checked the library reserve list and I am number 21. Which might be a good thing, because I suspect I need to re-read Life After Life before A God in Ruins or I'm going to be really confused.

I don't really know how to phrase any of this. I don't have the right words, and I don't even know if there are any right words. My mother died on Friday afternoon. She passed away at home, in her own bed, where she wanted to be. I wasn't at home, I was at work. But I got home as soon as I could, and I'd said good bye and that I loved her in the morning before I went to work.

I feel like I'm trapped in one of those dreams that are long and horrible and you wake up miserable but you can't remember the dream so you don't know why you're so miserable.

My mother was difficult and irascible and she wasn't easy to love. But I did. I loved her so much, and now she's gone. I keep wanting to ask her things - just practical things, the sort of question that you have and you just go "oh, I'll ask mum" but I can't.

Any thoughts or prayers are very much appreciated. Comments are open but I doubt I will be able to answer them.

Air and Angels

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

- John Donne

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The Last Night in Mithymna

Wind heaving in the trees.
My room quiet and warm.
Me on a thin mattress
looking at the full moon.
The sky black around Her face.
The trees a different black
beneath. Content at last
with this world that matches
my life inside and out.
Heave and renewed heave
inside and out,
and the gentleness.
Lying alone in a cotton slip
at ten of the night in July
and a bare bulb hanging down
turned on. My bare feet
warm where they cross
at the ankle.
The cloth over the broken window
swells and goes flat
and swells again.

- Linda Gregg

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The Clock in Literature

“Would you mind
If I headed up early?”
Says the husband
To his young wife.
“Follow when you like.”

Later that evening
The beautiful face
And exquisite limbs
Will rise from the table
Of the Southern inn
Having been spied
By the antihero
Across the room
Reading an indifferent book.

Oh, quick — 
Let a storm kill the light!

But you might as well say it
To a wall.
We can’t change
A single
Silver setting, or
Even by one day
Reduce
The bright full moon.

The clock in literature
Holds that moon.

“I know I can’t say
A single thing to stop you,”
Says the old man at table
To the suddenly risen girl.
“But sleep on it, will you?”
Not now — 
Not ever.

The clock in literature
Holds the ancient rune.

“I wonder if I might
Have a word with you,”
Says the antihero
To the lissome
Dark-eyed angel.

- Aram Sorayan, in Poetry (March 2015).

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Unpacking a Globe

I gaze at the Pacific and don’t expect
to ever see the heads on Easter Island,

though I guess at sunlight rippling
the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:
it lifted its ears and stopped eating

when it sensed us watching from
a glass hallway—in his sleep, a veteran

sweats, defusing a land mine.
On the globe, I mark the Battle of

the Coral Sea—no one frets at that now.
A poem can never be too dark,

I nod and, staring at the Kenai, hear
ice breaking up along an inlet;

yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head

but didn’t break stride; that’s how
I want to live on this planet:

alive to a rabbit at a glass door—
and flower where there is no flower.

- Arthur Sze, from poets.org.

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A Miracle For Breakfast

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.

- Elizabeth Bishop, from poemhunter.

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Safety in Numbers

The enthusiasm with which I repeatedly declare you my one
And only confirms the fact that we are indeed two,
Not one: nor can anything we do ever let us feel three
(And this is no lisp-like alteration: it’s four
That’s a crowd, not a trinity), and our five
Fingers and toes multiplied leave us at six-

es and sevens where oneness is concerned, although seven
Might help if one was cabalistically inclined, and “one”
Sometimes is. But this “one” hardly means one, it means five
Million and supplies not even an illusion of relevance to us two
And our problems. Our parents, who obviously number four,
Made us, who are two; but who can subtract us from some
mythical three

To leave us as a unity? If only sex were in fact “six”
(Another illusion!) instead of a sly invention of the seven
Dwarves, we two could divide it, have our three and, just as four
Became two, ourselves be reduced to one
– Actually without using our three at all, although getting two
By subtraction seems less dangerous than by division and would also
make five

Available in case we ever decided to try a three-
some. By the way, this afternoon while buying a six-
pack at the Price Chopper as well as a thing or two
For breakfast, I noticed an attractive girl sucking Seven-
Up through an angled and accordioned straw from one
Of those green aluminum containers that will soon litter the four

Corners of the visible world – anyway, this was at five
O’clock, I struck up a conversation with a view to that three-
some, don’t be shocked, it’s you I love, and one
Way I can prove it is by having you experience the six
Simultaneous delights that require at the very least seven
Sets of hands, mouths, etcetera, anyway more than we two

Can manage alone, and believe me, of the three or four
Women that ever appealed to both of us, I’d bet five
To one this little redhead is likeliest to put you in seven-
th heaven. So I said we’d call tomorrow between three
And four p.m., her number is six three nine oh nine three six.
I think you should call. What do you mean, no? Look, if we can’t
be one

By ourselves, I’ve thought about it and there aren’t two
Solutions: we need a third party to . . . No, I’m not a four-
flusher, I’m not suggesting we jump into bed with six
Strangers, only that just as two plus three makes five,
Our oneness is what will result by subtracting our two from three.
Only through multiplicity can unity be found. Remember “We Are
Seven”?

Look, you are the one. All I want is for the two
Of us to be happy as the three little pigs, through the four
Seasons, the five ages, the six senses, and of the heavenly spheres
all seven.

- Harry Mathews, in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics.

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SECOND DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

I am wearing my librarian costume.
Yes, I saved it from the fires.

In the future, when we say antiquity, we mean
state fairs and musicals. We mean affairs

of state, amusement. You left me a message
to say you were sad but you understood
which state I was coming from and I’m wondering

now which state you meant. West of us?
Or did you mean a state of mind?

I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.

I get dressed up and then I undress. I’d show you,
but this is a dispatch, I’m the dispatcher.

The calls come into my call center and
it’s my job to say, what’s the future

of your emergency?

Our new state flag is an aurochs,
not to celebrate extinction, but

to celebrate the wild part of us that died
in 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.

I wear my state flag like a dress.

- Leigh Stein, indigestmag.com.

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The Flames

You used to lean
on that cot rail
and wait
with the vigour of a flame
to leap into my arms
two feet tall and two years old
a sagging nappy
archless feet soft as cats' tongues
and trodden underneath
a thick and clammy waterproof
warm from sleep
the sheet ruched at the end
toys heaped confused
neglected as the dead
a duck stuck in the corner
I could see the basket of your ribs
your hands were opened
and all your bones and life
leapt up to mine

you row daily up the river now
‘The Amazon’ they call you
tall and cheeky
legs long as oars
you're taller than I am
and I still feel the spot
your head grated in my hip
you were lit inside my body
as a torch I carried you
now burning changing
you flare
into the light

- Kate Llewellyn

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