from Report from the Mangold Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
i.
Mangold [Sarah]
taps me on the shoulder
pins me upon the skins of creatures
suddenly peephole nostalgia
suddenly a widower + a witty crone + a mail carrier
+ two other poets + me [paid host]
wait for Rich [Adrienne]
who will read for us live
tomorrow… we might, tonight, (become surrogate daughters
trill our tongues without naming
(for our weeping mail
string birdsong to stars (carrier delivering love notes
stitch wild constellations (she herself never receives
but
manners demand we follow
the bereft widower to his domicile –
ghostly overstuffed cabin: raptors
share the ground floor with rodents.
taxidermy chatter ushers us to upstairs'
prize fox the witty crone
certain
we will find his wife stuffed too
now
Mangold shows us his mate
there in fauna’s placement
in predatory relations
their sewing hides
markets awaking
the allowable departure
from actualities see it
an index of her sensitivity tidy
workroom’s order iridescent
randomness of fatality
ii.
[Sarah] [Adrienne]
every
specimen fact retracting
like
vision we choose to know
her
landscape or not
occupied
places perfect bound postcards
in
want of a fox briars of legends
this
snail could have eaten the monster
this
snail could travel sleepwalking
could
have dreamed it was a painter
an
unconscious drive burnt yellow eyes
lacerated
skin sharp truth
putting
up graffiti now ancient
patterned
vision ridden
to
move in on backhanded fear
to
enfold in a protective hand- shake
a
vixen’s courage in vixen terms
skin
recital an accidental
masterpiece
no not accidental scurrying attention
magnified attentiveness
ontological
tricks to slip the normal
into
the birth-yell of the yet-to-be
iii.
a grid of permanence
the
book instructs how to make
a
strong winter sun with a cork
when
masking fluid is not at hand
some nicety will be required
remember
what this color pencil cannot do
too
much force too little spit
paper
shreds back to pulp
whipped white silk
on
cold press, “obliged” the only
word
blurring “turf as a rebirth”
dehydration
kills most swiftly
an ordinary fire
if
only there were a tray
with
little troughs for washes
Naples
yellow and vermillion
to change immediately after death
#12
brush makes a whole horizon
a
continuous sky where air still hisses
in
the room where mother sleeps
bent into diverse attitudes
her
nasal mask often out of place
each
day inching toward the finishing
nap
a lesson in low cloud mist
perishing the keeper
soon
her coma will blue her legs
she
will merge and soften
a
thin wash of rose madder
devotion to the task at hand
hospice
concertinas
the
diorama the window
is
less and less
her wilderness
her body
iv.
permanence
a
weak winter sun
masking
fluid
nicety
too
much force
paper
shreds
whipped
“obliged”
“turf . . .”
ordinary
only
there
little
troughs
immediately
air
hisses
mother sleeps
bent
out
of place
inching
perishing
coma
blue
rose
madder
the task
less
less
Wreading Sarah Mangold’s The Goddess Can Be Recognized By Her Step (Dusie Kollective, 2014) and Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners (Fordham University Press, 2021) with Adrienne Rich’s “Sleepwalking Next to Death,” Times Power: Poems 1985-1988 (Norton, 1989) and the title poem in Fox 1998-2000 (Norton, 2001). Weaving in, too, poems I wrote when my dying mother was in hospice.
Lori Anderson Moseman’s latest poetry collections include Darn (Delete Press, 2021), Y (Operating System, 2019), Light Each Pause (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), Flash Mob (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016) and All Steel (Flim Forum, 2012). Her collaboration with book artist Karen Pava Randall, Full Quiver, is available from Propolis Press. A former educator, she ran Stockport Flats press from 2006 to 2016. See https://loriandersonmoseman.com