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The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish

By JOSHUA WEINER

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-01701-3

Contents

Acknowledgments.....................................................ixRock Creek (II).....................................................3"The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish".....................27Florida: Schoolboy on Break.........................................29First Walk after Cancer.............................................30Things To Do While You're Here......................................31Winter Commute......................................................33The Winter's Tale...................................................37Rock Creek..........................................................41Hikmet: Çankiri Prison, 1938...................................44Cyclops.............................................................47Notes...............................................................67

Chapter One

    Rock Creek (II)


    Cutting a way through stone
    to see what's there, not
    how things appear, earth-blood,
    without style, never
    at rest, what settles in it
    read on the surface
    ripples meandering
    forward eddying back
    swirling turbid intricate plaits of
    water from the bottom rising
    turning upside down
    striking bank before
    returning to stream center
    original current
    indifferent to the play of light
    crystalline ideal forms
    a static lie, rather
    as Leonardo saw
    a motion resembling hair
    "one must take five days
    to place water in a picture"
    while a splash erupts
    into corona, its rim
    breaking into spills
    of droplets like the secret
    structure of rainfall
    scalloped edges of water
    joining water in common
    coil spawning vortices
    streamlines detaching
    as they hit fluorescent storm-swept
    traffic cones glowing
    half-submerged
    shedding eddies
    rushing faster by
    tightening gorge
    squeezed
    self-amplifying
    transmission as one
    flow drives another
    motion altering force
    driving that motion
    like Coltrane stretching
    tight vibrato
    phrases
    incremental shifts
    of pitch & tone
    the place it's going
    unknown excited
    viscous harmonies
    continuously born/
    devoured, cascades
    of smaller scales
    circulating airstreams
    "the unregarded river of our life"
    an overflow of "meanings
    with no speech"
    undirected
    as prisoners of
    Guantánamo
    flooding cells in protest
    each drinking
    eighteen bottles of water
    in an hour. And the breath,
    preaches one man
    having heard it from his father,
    "the breath moved
    upon the face of the waters,"
    while another speaks
    ex-con/activist, wry
    observer at the crossroads,
    how "the system is hustling
    backward."

    * * *

    Not a river of history
    like the Patawmack—
    big muddy highway
    Washington dreamed
    would connect the capital
    to a bountiful interior
    budging west, make him rich
    and keep the money moving
    "to bind all parts together
    by one indissoluble band"—
    the founding's first boondoggle
    "designated by law for the seat of Empire"—
    No, Rock Creek's histories
    converge as branches
    braiding like scoubidou
    a single spiral knotting
    that children weave to hold their keys
    it makes just one boundary of the verdant valley
    where L'Enfant walked in great coat
    surveying space
    so every homestead of the nation
    would feel the influence of its streets
    radiating outward
    and slaves hew trees to open them
    metabolize sardines and salt pork
    to pry up stumps, haul, and cut sandstone
    for buildings housing classical
    moral sentiments that shan't
    stop the flow of profits.
      Neither Rome, nor home
    Rock Creek is a passage
      where Whitman wanders
    after dispensing fruit syrups—
    "good and strong, but innocent"—
    mixed with ice water
    to young men missing limbs,
    thirsty, coated with murk & sweat
    in the Patent Office hospital.

    * * *

    The 9:30 Club is not named for a time
    but a place it used to be, 930 F Street,
    now in a building on V, once broadcasting
    1120 on your radio. Inside, my son plays drums
    in a band with other nine-year-olds
    trying to rock the judge's panel, 11 AM, a Saturday.
    And the parents are pumped, pulling for their kids
    on stage, a discrete loud screening
    of their own projections. Is it strange
    to hear children play...