Issue 1.1
Summer 2021
Su Love
Reflection:
“The Whole Bird Flies :The Hand She Raises” is a visually staged poem in which the punctuation moves thought and language more or differently than it traditionally does.
​
​
i
Let the crescents of the (gull
(up very high) (long wings) maybe heron)
Heron equal the daylit-capped moon’s
(
(
white-penciled arcs marked on aerogram-blue
dancing distanced with
white kayak paddle blades dip-lift, dip-lift
)
)
white crowns of water lilies, fans of lilies, and a blade
opened, opening, unopened
sclera of lily roots spiraling into the muck
reach down to go up, down to go forward
That gloved heron swiveling with kayak paddle blades (
)
)
(
ii
In the silence
The whole bird flies
iii
Heron, the mathematician, collected formulas,
Then they became known as his
For example, the one to figure the area of a triangle
When the lengths of all three sides are known
Is really Archimedes’ work
The Dalai Lama gestures with
(digitally entrained light)
His unsleeved arm spiraling in a gold room made of windows
“No independent existence. No locus of”
:self
:witness
:root
“Buddha says, science says, self arcs through all areas of the brain”
(by somatic measurements, self arcs through all areas of the body)
iv
In the silence made of the first alphabet of movement
:infuse, unfurl, spiral, turn and turn
:pull hydrogens and oxygens, pull charge
Crescent meant not shape but movement (wax, wane)
v
Heron, the engineer, forced air from metal necks
(see his book Pneumatica)
To make toy birds sing
vi
Heron, the appropriator, would not foresee
Repairs are needed
Some (material transfer)
In measure for the immeasurable
:
:
:
:(en)forced compressions
In the narratives of lunate economies (greater than, less)
In decrescendos from movement to states of being to imprisoned shapes
vii
Let the crescents of that gloved heron
Equal the daylit moon marking
:aerogram-blue
:white kayak paddle ( )
:white crowns of lilies, fans of lilies ( )
viii
This small scar? A white boy and a knife. Quite casually
He reaches over to slice her thumb
Because (she is proximate (his rage) (son of a wrecking ball
demoing his boy)
That boy sharp
(and a white girl (told (by white women) “he must like you
(hence, to be liked is to be cut) “be nice
to him” (that is, be likeable))
(nothing happens to him (boys will be boys)
:not nothing
:no repair
(boys will be men who were boys being
the men who were boys
of the men who beat them))
she entrains all emotion
into one nice state of being
(the shape is cut))
She bleeds.
He keeps his knife. She drops hers.
:and yet
That scar is a blade she wields for life
ix
In conclusion, a rush of monks, masked and gloved, rush into view
To help the Dalai Lama rise from his gilded chair. “Not to worry,”
He kindly offers his audience, “Just a little knee trouble”
x
Nice, adj., socially or conventionally correct[ed],
a nice girl
Extension of root *sek- to cut
“forms all or part of”
xi
Nice, literally not-knowing (ne + scire (science))
“The sense development has been extraordinary,
even for an adj.” (Weekley, qtd. in etymonline)
xii
This is not a scar
This is the edge of the embedded blade
In the hand she raises (in grief) (in question)
(in defense) (to speak)
In the hand with which she signs (wills)
(directives) (contracts) (debts)
In the hand with which she covers (her
mouth) (her eye) (her v ) (her page)
The hand that measures, marks, means,
Mends. The hand on her mind
xiii
Thus the areas of triangles wheel
:heron, moon, blade
:heron, blade, lily
Generations of one heron crescenting
Not the whole bird but the stagelit edges of its wings
(which is the whole bird (only the whole bird flies))
​
The Whole Bird Flies :The Hand She Raises
Su Love is the author of six collections of poetry, some published as Su Smallen. Her work has been recognized internationally, most recently by Salmon Poetry in Ireland, the Unamuno Author Series in Spain, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. (sulove.org)
Su's Book Recommendations
I most highly recommend Heid E. Erdrich’s Little Big Bully (Penguin, 2020), which I read right after Eavan Boland’s The Historians (Norton, 2020). I carried from Boland images such as "your mother and mine" burning journals and letters. "Record-keepers with a different task. / To stop memory becoming history. / To stop words healing what should not be healed." Boland describes moving in thought from "Silence was a story...on its own and all to itself" to "Silence told the story." In Erdrich’s poetry, silence is both story and storyteller, and also more. Silence is agent, intelligent power: "We do not speak those names in order that / they not answer." "A voice leaving us / or the opposite."
The woman said nothing The woman said nothing The woman said nothing
When nothing is said the story gets starved in that way she said
To stop memory becoming history, but Erdrich also asks history to align with memory. Erdrich marks and makes silence within as well as between lines, which knots and nets public and private grief, "depth alone." The net is capacious and holds misogyny, Native American genocide, and climate change which are colonialism and white supremacy, no harrowing to be considered separately. "Bully," noun or verb, now points to cruel and aggressive behavior, but the word’s historical meanings are lover, brother, and protector. Erdrich expertly and exquisitely engages all these meanings in Little Big Bully through craft, wisdom, anger, love, and vision.