Sophie Mayer

 

Carbon Dating

after Michael Winterbottom's '9 Songs'

1.
Nothing much remains.
Carbon, trace of her

burn in me, is all. Exhale once,
twice, again, and it is gone

almost, hanging before my
furred mouth, a cloud

in which I see our residue,
entwining.

2.
Rock. Star. Elements
in any form, coming

together. Small talk like
radiation, reaction, the fight

against gravity. Her fingers
are glowsticks, their length

tastes of sweat, smoke, iron:
heavy metals.

 

3.
And in her, a universe and
an age. Why range only in

space? Whorled. Mine, she is,
and striated, so I trace her

history, bury myself in her—
take the tarnish off these

phrases in our translucent
newness.

 

4.
Unknown quantities. In close
proximity: circle, attract, approach,

implode. Reform. A haze about
her—something undiscovered,

off the chart. Under the table.
Against the wall. Everywhere

we can enter each other, gaseous,
nebulous.

 

5.
And in our orbit, our stately,
violent passing, our horizon-

tal pas-de-deux, the music
of the spheres. Aurora

australis, the rending
of the sky: cold lightning

in widescreen, some shaking.
Handheld.

 

6.
That thing a star does with itself
is night. Is irising against

the night in swirls of blaze,
mirror of the watching eye

below it, cast into frigid awe
and molten longing, as gaze

coils between open and
open.

 

7.
History is littered with fools
following their stars. Dis-

asters. Burnings and explosions,
distress flares that lead searchers

to skeletons. And in the bones,
a spark that speaks, in tongues—

concentric, lapping, porous—of the
heart.

 

8.
What chokes us, too, is
carbon. Hides the night sky,

blurs outlines. Cigarettes and
cars. Our fault, then. Here, where

all is white, I've come to see
clearly: her million points of light,

scintillating silver knives, rushing
past.



9.
Or from the past. Look up,
see memory: the universe

swishing slow in its developing
tray, brilliant chemical bath

for sore eyes. Click. What was
between us, between us forever.

Frozen moments moving, warmed
by breath.

 


Copyright © Sophie Mayer, 2007.

Sophie Mayer has work in a number of magazines, and a chapbook above / ground in Canada, where she was living for several years. As Sophie Levy she was joint author of Marsh Fear/Fen Tiger (Salt, 2002) with Leo Mellor. Her solo collection, Her Various Scalpels was published by Shearsman Books in 2009.