Jody's Notes
Over and over again, I'm drawn to the supernatural, I'm drawn to the theological. When I'm trying to write poetry, I mean. Because supernatural imagery--theological imagery--seems to provide a kind of drama, a kind of emotional punch, a kind of emotional seriousness (a kind of cosmic seriousness) that almost nothing else seems to have. Such imagery seems to have emotional importance built right into it.
(I wrote a poem about this once, commenting on something that the physicist Richard Feynman wrote. But I don't think I really got to the heart of the issue in that poem.)
There is something frightening about this fact about the imagination. Because it isn't just me--it isn't just an idiosyncracy of my imagination. (Surely the kind of junk everyone else is reading proves this.)
What's frightening is that something so intrinsically false, so evidently false, has such an unyielding grip on the imagination. On my imagination. And on your imagination too. Most of you. Even those of you who think otherwise. Because many of you who think you're untouched by this kind of thing still wallow in it when you dream.
But maybe there are some of you whose imaginations really are untouched by this sort of thing. I'd be really scared if I was one of you, if I was like that. Because of everyone else around you.
I republished this poem in my collection The Lust for Blueprints.
Some gifts simply will not go away: instead,
like magic, they break sullenly in the fickle hand
(should it tire of them). They leave
splinters, pointy relics, in even the
shallowest of palms. You
know this now; for my touch has gotten
under your skin, and given birth.
Despite yourself, you nurse
our subcutaneous child each time
you bathe; you tickle the embryo god
each time you touch your breasts
(or let someone else rest a hand there). In return,
as intrusive as rain,
our godspring transforms each caress,
no matter how contemporary,
into my familiar ghost.
The god has tampered with me, too
(for you are not alone in this): I
am elusive now; neither in space
nor time, nor in the vanishingly thin squeak
of the telephone. No, I live now
(and it is a fine life, all things considered),
sandwiched between your skin,
and everyone else. I am
only tactile these days: available to you
at a touch, even if you shake hands
with a total stranger, and whisper to yourself
hopefully, “This, at least, is innocent.”
© 1999, 2001 Jody Azzouni