READ LOCAL First is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah’s literary writers.
Today, 15 Bytes features David Hawkins who provides three selections from his award-winning manuscript the book of the missing. “dark adaptations” is one of two long poems in the collection and the featured sections below were originally published in the Seattle Review. The other long poem in the collection was written after Leonardo’s famous anatomy “The Foetus in Utero,” the focus of Hawkins’ reading this past Wednesday at City Arts at the Salt Lake City Library downtown. The two long poems are meant to work together, he explains. The “adaptations” are, in part, variations on themes raised in the Leonardo poem.
Sunday Blog Read continues to collect a distinguished group of established and emerging Utah writers for your review and enjoyment. Past writers have included former and current Utah Poets Laureate Kate Coles and Lance Larsen, poet Michael McLane, short story writer Darrell Spencer, fiction writer Larry Menlove, memoirist Christopher Bigelow, poet Shanan Ballam, speculative fiction writer Steve Proskauer, fiction writer April Wilder, short fiction writer Calvin Haul, poet Joel Long, fiction writer Lynn Kilpatrick, and, last month, narrative nonfiction writer Phyllis Barber.
So curl up with your favorite cup of joe and enjoy the work of David Hawkins!
dark adaptations
ONCE plucked from sleep lids fringed in the black
floss of dreams you woke half in the placid
dark of this world & half the other
Into endless night no stars no moon
only the faint rhythmic snuffling of your
love in bed beside you told you this
was your own room And the eye that called up
visions even in emptiness where you
couldn’t see beheld in the pitch
black numbers their cloaks clumped with leaves
mouths smutched with blackcake & ash as if words
burned on the cold altars of their tongues
All night you watched this grave procession
& when one finally spoke one wretched
syllable hung in the air like smoke Cold
the poor soul complained Cold it repeated
but would say no more then lurched off
bones rattling like wood claves beneath
its tunic Was that it you wondered
was that all that lie in store & when you
woke in your bed from the half-dream there was
this strange animal-smell in the sheets
Well what could you do The ancient night grows
more ill-starred & fettled with coal pickings
& draws out each twilight as air turns cold
the renewal of our sooner passing
So without even a weak light for warmth
in this small dark corner you chose to
burble the black curses of the old wound
to the deep & slumbrous cosmos
*
THROUGH smoke clotted air in a leaf-matted
coat damp with rain the Orphan keeps watch
Eyes town—but won’t return lives in woods
& hills like a squatter He hauls a clutch
of twigs for the fire whispers to beasts fur
glistening with grease water He explains
all the town’s exactly as he left it
the enfeebled light of the foundry
& coal-pit pipefire’s flickering votive
& above all the disinterested star-
drunk dark that marks the visible boundary
The animals nod bray softly at
the moon the little light it gives so crude
only their single note now roughly
doffing its small coat can match it
Come back we beg starlights are only
little wishes for presence & the egg
alone in its nest sends up a wistful
persistent call Then we add Listen
you can hear the crow that lives in the walls
*
RECKLESSLY you chased the dream into light
Now the lawn must be mown flowers tended
& you’ve found so many entanglements
nothing can be gathered in any lone
vessel Is it any wonder you can’t
remember how simple it once was when
a suckling pulse & small scaffold of bone
braced the inaugural flesh & heart-root
trailed into dark When occult notaries
in every secret port refused
to disembark they wrote by the rocking
rushlight of their black naval desks
The notebooks they’ve left behind describe
an unnamed city slowly stripped of light
the gray slabs of its streets & boroughs pried
up & dumped with slag & in a most
inscrutable grammar the splendid tower
reduced to scrap burned in the black square
where day or night the sculptor’s hammer
rung feverishly against the stone
If only you could get it back but here
the outer real estate’s grown wild with age
& night teems with twists of stars
& we have still so much to do before
its black haul swells up & overtakes us
#
© 2014, David Hawkins. As originally appeared in The Seattle Review. Reprinted with permission of the author.
David Hawkins is the author of the non-fiction chapbook, Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-it® Notes, winner of the Cupboard’s Literary Pamphlet competition, selected by Michael Martone (2011) and the poetry collection, the book of the missing, winner of a Utah Arts Council award for poetry and a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson prize. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals and periodicals, including At Length Magazine, Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Chelsea, DIAGRAM, The Pedestal, SPORK, and The Seattle Review, among others. An Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the University of Utah where he was the Editor-in-Chief of Quarterly West from ‘01-’05, David lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and their two boys.
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Categories: Literary Arts | READ LOCAL First
