“After the snowfall, snowfall jewels my hair, my church shoes muddy the bedspread. Crazy, you called me, not much of a lady. Flip up the light switch. A child, I act a child. At night I hold a postcard: two plums adorn a plum tree, what we could be. The door tight in its door frame, the window keeps shutting on me. In every dream I dream I am asleep, your fingers closed around my wrists. Your breathing steals the room. You won’t explain my shrinking vision, why I never knew enough about the topiary—every limb is a root, every tree a tree.”
—Camille Rankine, “Letter to the Winding-Sheet,” originally published in The Rumpus.Still Life with Spurious Picturesque
The thought insists upon itself. The dead
body of it, what you have put together:
The hillside won’t make sense.
You run through the trees, but the trees
lead nowhere.
Didn’t the sky come down on you like.
Didn’t you think you saw.
The irrational forest,
your stupid mouth,
a breath stillborn.
Define: Lake.
Ink stain. The cold, cold water.
The heart’s slow beat.
There is no imagining anymore. You awake
and everything is flatter. You go outside
and there is nothing to see.
Camille Rankine
Symptoms of Island
Sometimes in the morning your hand
finds the dip in my side. For the moment
we’ll call it happiness. This does not
account for weeks spent cursing
the apple trees, their sticky bloom.
The man on the bus gaping
at my slack lip knew. Plump dumb
stone in my mouth. I’m sure of it.
That afternoon you were a brisk,
starched thing. We slipped out
the back way, screen door banging
cruel on my slim-boned grim. Today,
like most days, my mind arrives
an island, tongue-numb, child wishes
ivied onto me. God takes away,
it’s said. Call it what you will.
— Camille Rankine
Still Life with Spurious Picturesque
The thought insists upon itself. The dead
body of it, what you have put together:
The hillside won’t make sense.
You run through the trees, but the trees
lead nowhere.
Didn’t the sky come down on you like.
Didn’t you think you saw.
The irrational forest,
your stupid mouth,
a breath stillborn.
Define: Lake.
Ink stain. The cold, cold water.
The heart’s slow beat.
There is no imagining anymore. You awake
and everything is flatter. You go outside
and there is nothing to see.
by Camille Rankine
Still Life with Spurious Picturesque
The thought insists upon itself. The dead
body of it, what you have put together:
The hillside won’t make sense.
You run through the trees, but the trees
lead nowhere.
Didn’t the sky come down on you like.
Didn’t you think you saw.
The irrational forest,
your stupid mouth,
a breath stillborn.
Define: Lake.
Ink stain. The cold, cold water.
The heart’s slow beat.
There is no imagining anymore. You awake
and everything is flatter. You go outside
and there is nothing to see.
~ Camille Rankine
