{"id":31344,"date":"2015-12-27T00:22:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-27T06:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=31344"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:00:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:00:38","slug":"sunday-blog-read-lisa-bickmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sunday-blog-read-lisa-bickmore\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First: Lisa Bickmore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3356f1_4e9edaf959ac4c7e81b5961354922944\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\nREAD LOCAL First is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir.<\/p>\n

Today, 15 Bytes features West Jordan-based poet Lisa Bickmore who offers here three poems, the first from her collection flicker<\/a><\/em> (Elixir Press) to be released January 1, 2016. The second and third are from a new, unpublished collection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunday Blog Read continues to accrue a distinguished group of established and emerging Utah writers for your review and enjoyment.<\/p>\n

So curl up with your favorite cup of joe and enjoy the work of Lisa!<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Notes toward elegy
\n<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 —<\/em>for Larry Levis<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That day I imagined him in flames, the day I heard of his death, the cat on my
\ntable batted the dying lilacs, the florets barely clinging to the stem by brittle
\nthreads, falling blue & gray like ash. Falling to the table like a pool of blue ash.
\nThinking, yes, this, his fabled excesses, it could be fire, emblem enough,
\nknowing now that it\u2019s just the words left of him, just the ashes. To let his
\nlanguage inhabit me for awhile, pass through me like wind through sheer
\nfabric; grazing me, lifting up the curtain & passing by, repeatedly; tearing
\nthrough the house of me in sheets of flame.\u00a0 Putting on the clothing of his
\nlanguage, hoping to take on charisma in the praising & the mourning of him.
\nNot enough, of course:\u00a0 not enough grief & not enough language to meet the
\nfact of him smoking outside the building.\u00a0 Not enough to match the voice of
\nhim saying, Members of the Committee on the Ineffable, or him sitting elbows
\non the table, bored but patient listening to some poet translate another
\ndream. Once I saw him outside a laundromat, holding a woman & kissing her
\non his motorcycle.\u00a0 What are lilacs or a petulant cat to that seedy & therefore
\neloquent romance?\u00a0 A cat who never even knew him, for that matter?\u00a0 I am
\nlike one of the necessary though mute figures Chekhov imagined for a
\nRussian novel in a last late fragment:\u00a0 a parrot; a thrush; a dog so clever he
\ncan practically speak.\u00a0 & doggedly I insist, I insist I will make an elegy out of
\nthis brief chapter, out of laundry if I must, out of something as ordinary as
\ndishtowels or socks, lank hair, startling eyes; out of his belly in his shirt, his
\nslouch; improvising something out of this too much life, now absent even his
\npoor things.\u00a0 Moorless, I keep banging up against whatever presents itself, as
\non Memorial Day, when we looked for my husband\u2019s grandfather\u2019s grave,
\nfinding myself standing in the cemetery on Prospect Avenue.\u00a0 The addresses
\nof the dead.\u00a0 & then up a little hill, where a doe nosed the wall, & a rabbit ran
\nacross the small apartments where they lay sleeping.\u00a0 This Arcadia.\u00a0 He
\nreturns at the last\u2014where?\u00a0 to the long central valley of California, to
\nflowering & harvest, cultivation, to mist & miasma.\u00a0 On what street if any
\ndoes he live?\u00a0 What animals flank his grave, graze at his bed?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

from the 2016 collection flicker. <\/em>Used with permission.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>*<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Heavy metal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u02da<\/p>\n

The sound bled from his headphones
\nthrash metal: he knelt in a pew, late
\nafternoon sun pouring particolored
\nand his pallor gleaming: sound blooming
\naround him, but muffled: I glanced back
\nat him from a few pews forward; like
\nJesus in the paintings of Gethsemane,
\nhis arms open, hands open, looking up: he
\nwas not well, and the music, if you could
\ncall it that, a quiet scream deadened in that
\nhigh-ceilinged stone room, a sea, churning<\/p>\n

\u02da<\/p>\n

that stops when I halt in the ditch<\/p>\n

\u02da
\ngrass-lined cut between the road north
\nand the road south, the motor still going<\/p>\n

\u02da<\/p>\n

a buzz at the back of the song,
\nno organ or choir: the boy looked as if
\nhe had not slept, he was sweating,
\nthe music its own cell and him alone in it:<\/p>\n

\u02da
\nonce after mass I found a felled bird
\non the plaza north of the church,
\nhalved as if with a sharp, swift knife:
\nlooked up, no one but me there to see<\/p>\n

\u02da
\nthe sky lifts away and I am drawn up to it,
\nI have not slept, but there\u2019s music for driving
\nwhen already broken:<\/p>\n

\u02da<\/p>\n

if it could be called song<\/em>: we looked back and
\nlooked away from his percussion, his making
\nno noise but the uproar at his ear<\/p>\n

\u02da
\nin which I say something otherbodily, un-
\nthought, again and again as if it alone might
\nbind me to myself hurtling away from impact:
\nthe truck I hit two times made of what seems
\nto me steel, my fender crushed like a paper cup:
\nI sing I don\u2019t know what words in the capsule
\nof my headlong car, boundless, until I stop
\nin the gully, the car humming, my heart<\/p>\n

\u02da<\/p>\n

the priest talks on, as if this noise were the same
\nas the still air, the falling atoms of afternoon light<\/p>\n

\u02da
\ncareening: sun high at its one o\u2019clock traverse,
\nthe car breathes, I hum, check my instruments
\nto see if I am well: strangers stand beside their cars
\nwait\u00a0 at the other side to pull me from the wreck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally published in the journal\u00a0Menagerie<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After you left,<\/strong>
\nwe crossed the river another dozen times,
\ntwice in taxis, walked to a new museum, bought books,
\nfound the Mermaid Cafe and took the train to Howth
\nwhere the stairs up to Church Street smelled<\/p>\n

of ancient urine and the abbey kept falling, invisibly,
\nto ruins under a brilliant sun.\u00a0 It was late September.
\nThe station with all its hurry had chocolate and crisps
\nto eat. I bought a magazine.\u00a0 At the end of this journey,<\/p>\n

We had emptied ourselves of nearly every desire:
\nonly the west still glittered, the unsought and unobtained,
\nand you had gone home to your city of granite
\nand further, to your village, and we were alone<\/p>\n

with the Irish and the remnants of the dawn
\nwhen we kissed you goodbye on St. Augustine Street
\njust blocks from St. Audoen\u2019s and its ceiling
\nmade of clouds, only hours from the last sunlight<\/p>\n

that poured like a river down the stone street.
\nWe walked to bronze and bird-stained Joyce,
\nand the black pool for which the Vikings named the city
\nwas nowhere to be found, but everywhere<\/p>\n

was the absence of you:\u00a0 girl skipping with paper bag
\nand hair bow; you sitting across from me at tea,
\nme appeasing disconsolate Evie outside the exhibit
\nof the ancient book.\u00a0 We viewed Yeats\u2019s notebooks,<\/p>\n

lingered over the faded signatures and you were not there:
\nthe light was chalky, cold at the bone; sirens brayed
\nup the streets.\u00a0 Dublin would never miss us, but we,
\nforeign and exhausted, longed for you at Ha\u2019Penny Bridge:<\/p>\n

the enigmatic saint stenciled in spray paint on the door
\nspoke your names: this would all go on and we would
\ndisappear as the detail of a fresco altarpiece had, leaving
\njust the outlined torso of someone once said to be holy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Copyright, Lisa Bickmore, 2015<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\"3356f1_c84b5b5712dd4867a92bf20abd3cdebd\"<\/a>Lisa Bickmore is the author of two books of poems:\u00a0flicker<\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0which won the 2014\u00a0Antivenom Prize\u00a0from\u00a0Elixir Press<\/a>; and\u00a0Haste<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Signature Books<\/a>, 1994).\u00a0Her poetry, scholarship, and video work have been widely published in\u00a0Glass: A Journal of Poetry;<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Tar River Poetry<\/em>;\u00a0Sugar House Review<\/em>;\u00a0SouthWord<\/em>;\u00a0Caketrain<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0Hunger Mountain Review<\/em>;\u00a0Terrain.org<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0Bite Size Poems project<\/em>\u00a0(Utah Arts Council);\u00a0Quarterly West<\/em>;\u00a0The Moth<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0MappingSLC.org<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets<\/a>;\u00a0<\/em>and elsewhere. In 2015, her poem ‘Eidolon’ was awarded the\u00a0Ballymaloe International Poetry Award<\/a>.\u00a0Currently, she is a\u00a0Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College, where she teaches writing of all sorts, and is one of the founders of the SLCC Publication Center.<\/p>\n

Past featured writers in <\/em>15 Bytes\u2019 Sunday Blog Read:\u00a0Katharine Coles<\/a>, Michael McLane<\/a>, Darrell Spencer<\/a>, Larry Menlove<\/a>,Christopher Bigelow<\/a>, Shanan Ballam<\/a>, Steve Proskauer<\/a>, April Wilder<\/a>,Calvin Haul<\/a>, Lance Larsen<\/a>, Joel Long<\/a>,Lynn Kilpatrick<\/a>,Phyllis Barber<\/a>, David Hawkins<\/a>,Nancy Takacs<\/a>,Mike Dorrell<\/a>,Susan Elizabeth Howe<\/a>, Star Coulbrooke<\/a>, Brad Roghaar,<\/a>Jerry Vanleperen<\/a>,Maximilian Werner<\/a>, Markay Brown<\/a>, Natalie Young<\/a>, Michael Sowder<\/a>, andDanielle Beazer Dubrasky<\/a>,\u00a0Kevin Holdsworth<\/a>,\u00a0Jacqueline Osherow<\/a>, Stephen Carter<\/a>,\u00a0Alex Caldiero<\/a>,\u00a0Stephen Tuttle<\/a>, Raphael Dagold<\/a>, and David Lee<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

READ LOCAL First is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir. Today, 15 Bytes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":31348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,35,2513],"tags":[2689,2688,2687,1301],"class_list":["post-31344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-elixir-press","tag-flicker","tag-lisa-bickmore","tag-sunday-blog-read"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/3356f1_4e9edaf959ac4c7e81b5961354922944.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 13:41:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31344"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97397,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31344\/revisions\/97397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}