Split/Levels

by Judith Fitzgerald

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

first persona


28 and going on
forever, going where
gone is forgiven
where dawn's rose-
ravaged fingers
go for the throat
and nothing lingers

the old preoccupations
no longer make sense
chaos is finally
a condition of restraint
something the weak
of heart repulse to

merely a recollection
of anguish displaced

* * *

first persona the second


you stand in the doorway
and slur the landscape;
my heart slants
to an invisible angle
and the screen door
bangs hinge-captive,
it's useless,
an appearance,
it's got too many holes
to keep anything in
or out, anyway.

* * *

first persona the third


and gaining. there's not enough
language to go around here
in the middle of nowhere
in the midst of chiasmus

just the wide open spaces
of our longing

* * *

first persona the fourth


and fallible, forthwith
forgotten, not taken as granted
but returning to the slanted sky -
why?

better it's forgot,
no heart here
needs a free pot-shot.

* * *

first persona the fifth


and johnnie walker's got the drift,
got the avalanche
got the scheme
the one/two trust
the one/two dream

* * *

first persona corona


and personable too
this here narrator's
got a crimson blue
got a magnetic bubble
crown for you

don't take it personally
it's not meant that way
it's the you of you turns
inside out they say

* * *

first persona bizillionth


and since we are
living and luscious
on Olson's star
the mayan bitch
seeking a sun
with her fingers craving
and her breath undone

first persona
and personally, yes

there's a chance of discovery
but you never confess

* * *

last persona


but not least
in person, sometimes
even I amaze easily

* * *

the man with the broken neck


this is the century
of the common man

the man with the broken neck
tilts his head back
and the world falls into place

he lives all his life
imprisoned by square lines

a vicious music
creates the tavern walls
and the other breaks

inside him are small eggs
and volcanoes

the man with the broken neck
tilts his head back
and the world is rewritten

he is not a man
forced to do anything

the other collects
past the limit, blood-running
eyes, remember to deliver

* * *

Past Cards


All Saints' Day
Marriage between Marjorie Mary
(from Brockville)
and Douglas Damnation
(from Ireland)
annulled,
cancelled,
declared invalid.

Damnation in the photograph,
heading for Korea, returning or
smiling
Dear saint wedding photograph
somewhere in the memory, but destroyed
in the aftermath. Marriage
overgrown from the back seat
of a Ford in February.

First inarticulate conception
snowbound:
A daughter,
conceived in snow,
received in snow.

* * *

bellocq


it's the short way through
repetition, the vague plagiarist
haunting the darkness light steals
bellocq knew it, him and them
girls he wooed with gunpowder
hard road to travel,
to make
alone

(a view, a camera
nowadays, it's an instantaneous
catch before the millionth
of a second / then it freezes
subject and the object
disappears)

he breathed fire
it extinguished him crippled
reflection sharp
in the tiny perfect windows
hands swallowing the eye
each act casting
its author back

he believed
hid his belief
in an attempt to conceive
images

the images are real

the only action
made him feel