Poetry by Rachel Linton

      Коля Саныч CC




Stubborn.

I sit in the car with my knees up so I can see
the hole in my jeans, more gray than black
by now. By now, I’m twenty-five, it’s once
again Christmas, and they say you can’t go home
again. Bullshit. Home is what you make of it.
Home is my Mom’s apartment, home is
seventy-nine degrees on the twenty-fifth of
December, home is the refusal
to say it’s over.

I’ve never conceded fucking anything.
I’ve played more chess games to a draw
than anyone I know, and I don’t even play
that much chess. I finish every cup of coffee
I make, even if it means it has to go in the fridge
overnight, even if I have to microwave it six
times, even if I’ve microwaved it six times
and it’s still, somehow, gone cold again.
There are nice words for what I am, like
tenacious, like determined, words that make
what I really am, stubborn, sound like a virtue.

I was born stubborn. I’ve died on a lot of hills,
as we say in English. In French they say, 
je n’en démordrai pas, “I won’t unbite this,”
and that works too. When I was a kid, you
could always tell I was mad, because I’d clench
my jaw real hard, bite down, bitter. Now,
you can tell I’m mad because I tell you. No such thing
as water off a duck’s back, over here. I get
ice down my veins, my insides lock up, and then
there we are, throwing down. I have principles like
some plants have roots, so deep that no matter
what you do, no matter how deep you dig, you’ll never
cut them all the way out.

I’m not saying I never lose. I lose all the time, I lose
more than almost anyone I know, because at some 
point, most people take their toys and go home.
Most people can take a hint from the universe.
Not me. I’m immune to hints. The only signs I believe in
are the ones the government sticks on the side of the road.
If there’s a higher power, he’s going to have to write me
directly, because I don’t play telephone. If you want

to make me wrong, you’re going to have to prove it,
beyond a preponderance of the evidence, please
and thank you. If you want me off this hill, you better
have a shovel, and you better be willing to dig longer
than I’m willing to shove a pawn back and forth, 
reheat a cup of coffee, and hold 
the fuck on.

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the archer’s guide to letting go

i. 

Someone told me that every writer gets two subjects, only.

If you’re a writer offended by this, it’s probably true--
which is one way to say that this poem is about
what every poem I write is about
which is the irrefutable fact that everyone I love
will someday be dead.

I live for months at a time without thinking this thought,
which is impressive since it lives in my chest,
just below my sternum, I think, although sometimes
it slips down and takes a nap 
between my ribs.

And then it will be night, and I will be alone
in the bathroom, brushing my teeth,
or staring aimlessly through the glowing laptop screen
and it will crawl up my throat into my head
and I’ll think, ah, fuck
and that’s it, that’s the evening,
mourning for the everything I will,
eventually,
lose.

ii. 

I sit on the hardwood and put my bow together
if I need to build a metaphor 
or kill time. It isn’t easy 
but nothing built for violence is.

It takes strength to string a bow--physical
but also the strength of confidence
--in yourself and the weapon,
that it is strong enough to bend and not break,
that you are strong enough to force it to bear the string.
Those are the two kinds of strength--
the kind that you use to repel tragedy,
to bend the world to the preferred shape,
and the kind you use to bear it
when the world,
instead,
bends you.

iii.

You don’t fire an arrow.
You release it.
No trigger is pulled or button pressed.
It’s just your fingers as they uncurl and let go,
and the arrow flies,
loosed,
freed.

It’s a better lesson than a pistol, where it’s all about the pull
and then it bucks in your hand anyway,
the way a startled animal
might twist back and sink its teeth in
just to feel some control.

I used to pray for the first kind of strength,
the kind that forces the bow to attention,
that lives in the back and the shoulder.
Then I learned enough to ask for the kind
that lives in the mind, that bites back the cry
or forces down the prickle of tears
at the corners of your life.

Now, I think, there is a third kind,
that might live in hearts--although not yet mine,
or if it does it is a fragile fledgling thing,
and I feel only occasional flutters.

And that kind--if it exists--is the strength
that lets tears fall, and breaks,
and mourns,
and breathes,
still,
after.

​iv. 

I, the magpie child,
button collector, file cabinet keeper,
have lost little--I even
retrace my steps, some days, and find
three rooms back, the thought
that drifted from my head.

So to spend all this time grieving
is a little bit jumping the gun--
pre-work, studying for some
indeterminable exam I will inevitably take
or rather have taken from me.

I want to know the Death of literature--
the old friend, the kindly carriage-stopper--
but I know I will hate him, spit at him,
kick him in the balls when he inevitably comes.

There’s no dignity, naturally,
in weeping for the living, in
preparing for the worst, but strength
has nothing in common with dignity
until you have it--
before it’s just sweat, and ache,
and scraping out the soft
fragile innards, dripping blood
like a melted popsicle
on the floor.

It might even be responsible, to turn the blade--
the sword of loving someone has two edges,
there will be an exit wound and they tell you
to always pull an arrow through
the other side.

But what do I know? I am holding on too tight
to a rope no one has--yet--
tried to jerk from my hands, fearing
the follow through, imagining the inevitable,
to prepare for the thing
that will,
someday,
break me.

v.

I fear most that it will be wordless--
that grief is ineffable, that the language
I use to circumscribe my problems
will shatter like a glass hammer when taken
to the problem I fear most.
I write myself into circles, into aftermaths,
an endless series of dress rehearsals
for the worst thing I know
will happen to me.

I am trying to find the antidote
for a poison I will drink someday,
prepare for the eventual glass
of iocane--
what a waste, in the end,
to spend so much time
preparing for the recoil
as though it won’t still bruise.

The rifleman tells you, brace yourself,
but if you want good advice,
ask the archer, who will tell you:
the only way to move forward
is to let go.

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Dream Material

There are a lot of things I do every day 
that I never dream about
like taking a shower:
at some point while rubbing the soap between my hands,
scrubbing my skin, noticing the smear of
blood on the inside of my thigh
(nothing sinister, just life,
or at least nothing more sinister 
than life) my brain decides, 
this isn’t dream material.

Maybe it’s because the details,
like soap from the skin,
slough off the mind as unimportant--
popular wisdom tells you to live in the moment,
focus on what you are doing, but thoughts
spiral upwards like steam in the hot water
and anyway, poetry isn’t wisdom, poetry
is just beauty, is just a rhythm,
just because something means something
doesn’t make it wise, meaning
is in the eye of the beholder,
is a tautology, is, like the past, another country
or no such thing.

Dreams, like poems, are full of
recurring elements: monsters without form,
from which I am nonetheless running for my life,
sweat sticky down my back, breathless on
the stretch of sidewalk driveway-side
of my childhood home.
But unlike good poems--which,
like good data analysis, find meaning
in the images, illuminate a pattern
in the raw numbers--dreams 
are all litany, a big soup
of pictures, of ghosts, just the brain
debugging itself during sleep
full of things you can’t forget
even if you also can’t really remember.

Besides, while poems might suggest themselves
in the mind, emerging as the hot water
streams down my back, closing my eyes
to keep the suds out, I do get 
to pick and choose;
there’s only so many times 
you can write about rain, 
or ghosts, or grief 
before you see the reflection of an old thought 
in the new one, your face 
in the steamed-up mirror,
roll your eyes at yourself 
and try again.

The dream doesn’t self-select; whatever the mind
is doing in ‘off’ mode, it pulls out 
the same old toys--
the figure too close behind me, 
the crunch of dry oak leaves,
the air and time like molasses, a string of rooms
and conversations, figures of imagined people--
I always think it’s real, which is another thing
a good poem has over a dream--sometimes
it makes sense the next morning, 
the way the dreams never do:
how the monster never catches me but
I can never get away, how I’m sure I love people
who I wake and remember 
were never real, or can’t remember at all,
how I dream night after night
about being dirty but never
getting clean.

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Rachel Linton (she/her) is a playwright, poet, and law student at the University of Chicago. Her poems have previously appeared in Emerge Literary Journal, Strange Horizons, The Deeps, and The Sunlight Press, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can learn more about her work at rachellinton.com.
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