The Sorcerer's Assistant

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as it were, I still can never sleep

stir under stiffened sheets

motivated by desire and dyspepsia as Vlad would say

I shake and break my breath on well-steamed stairways

at the top a girl stands, staring

with hooks attached to her lashes

can you feel the red wine rise in my throat?

acrid and burning,

it is impossible to swallow while sleeping, try it sometime,

you’ll see;

Golden eyes

stream cones of light into caverns of memory

scattering moths as they search the musty darkness

the moths will come back, they never could resist that light.

Tell me a story.

remember the most amazing five minutes of your life,

and describe them in ten.

how easy it is. Myth-making

molding men from clay

use your tongue

to stretch and pull the coiled tendrils of Time

she begins to dissolve and then reform with your voice

she doesn’t speak she doesn’t have to

and as the yellow fog rubs its back upon the windowpane,

she turns her face slowly into the moonlight

and recognition hits like hot rain

the girl in the gaps.

her image shaken free as I pulled loose the folds in the fabric of the past

the kind of beauty that can only exist in recollection

O, help me Mnemosyne!

the cold ticking of the wall clock slows and finally dies,

do you trust me?

crawl with me into the elastic space that lives between the clicks

don’t worry, we’ll be safe here

here, where a hundred years fit into several seconds,

we can, and we do, dream eternity.

Unripe

5/25/08

by katie boyden

a girl wraps herself in sweet somethings ,

cool, foggy air surrounds her in the shapeless space

and claws at the darkness--- her face

reminds me of the time

you flashed me your Jack of Spades

smug

like i wanted it

she sighs and puts the bottle to her lips

carbonation cracks her throat

as she watches the bubbles race towards the surface,

---pulling deeply through her teeth.

you wink and spray whipped cream into your mouth

dizzy you got some nitrous too

didn't you?

you say my hands intoxicate you

I raise them to my face and breathe in the earthy smell of tomato plants

You let me rub the sweet, green scent into your skin.

a girl blows smoke O's

watches the red-orange tip glow brighter as she inhales

a flush of freezing air

makes ripe, fragile buds perk up underneath her shirt.

your mouth is crushed velvet

pours wine in my sheets

that just we can see.

and the sound of my heart pounding the bed frame

is the only thing that can shatter the silence.

Your voice is thick in my throat

and plays loudest in my memory.

a girl jumps, startled
from the sudden sound of a woman's voice from inside

but it's only a loud commercial on TV.

She walks to the ledge and takes a final long drag exhaling into the frozen night

a fresh raindrop mingles with the salty stream on her cheek

she turns to go in

hesitates,

leans over the tomatoes, and inhales.

Entropy

Heat does funny things to people.

In the summer months of Los Angeles, this effect is especially apparent. The energy from a sweltering July sun charges the air in such a way that disrupts the normal electrical firings in our brains, making everyone just a little more edgy, a little less controlled than usual. In much the same way it turns water to steam, our thoughts become less orderly and more chaotic as the days get longer and hotter. We do things that we never thought in a million years we would do.

But the really interesting thing about heat is that it is never the same. The light and energy that the sun gives our planet today is different from the heat we’ve felt yesterday and what we will feel tomorrow. And it isn’t just in the sunlight, it’s in everything, our hands, our hot dogs, our coffee, our breath. It is a one-way system, and as fast as the sun can produce it, it will escape into the atmosphere, the universe, never to be recaptured. This is called the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The energy put into a system can never be fully recycled; some part of it will always be lost.

This seems inefficient. It’s not. In fact, I believe it’s terribly important. It is the stuff of free will. The sunlight today is unique, infused with possibility. That energy is a gift, the present in every sense of the word. How we use our heat, today, is what shapes our destinies, and is what creates the explosion that happens when two charged particles collide. And we have to act fast because, when it comes down to it, we will all eventually cool off.

redwood grove

i crush berries sweet black

my tongue pressed palate

pours lip-staining rivlets

swirls by goosebump calves the coldfresh water,

My father wades in the waning day.

careful a current! laughing

i drop my too-big gloves

a rock. a stumble. a startle? a bird! a thorn. a thrash.

a guess. a grab. a bee!

throw bubbles i said

make claps i laughed.

a shout. a shove. a splash. a grinning gasp.

Vines bright green wrap tendrils of memory.

i see sour, see? green. see?

good enough for me.

plucking the ripe ovaries without permission

wet jeans wrap skin.

little fingers sneaking, don’t watch daddy!

he catches me snacking. but look over there

caught in those brambles a baby dove his leg is stuck!

a trill. a gray. a chance?

a clutch. a wing.

a ride. a splint. a hope. a life.

he’ll be ok now, won’t he?

Let’s go home

mud-cracked fingernails and angry red scratches

wash up and wipe the dirt off my chin,

smash the berries into a paste turns my fingers purple

Pour the sugar little sous chef

kneading ambition, flour clouds powder our smiles,

a feather. a father.

a pie.

Dry

I am, you know,

she said—pulling

her shirt over her eyes—

just here because I am supposed to be

And you?

The same, I replied

winter nights aren’t meant to be spent alone

No, she agreed, skin turning to paper beneath my touch

not even in a city without snow

It isn’t because of the cold that I need you next to me, I pressed my lips to her shoulder blade

Then why?

It’s the light

The light?

The white, impersonal winter sky. It reminds me of an operating room, I shudder, my breath coming hot against her neck. Sunlight does not warm us in winter. We need humans for that.

That isn’t what you mean.

Well what do I mean then?

We crave human touch because of the darkness. Shorter days mean longer nights.

……………

“Do you know why the leaves change color in the fall?” I ask, peering at her from across the room.

“Yes, because the days are shorter,” she says, returning my stare. Her phone rings and I pause waiting for her to do something.

“Do you need to take that call?”

She leans over and checks the ID. “No, it’s my vet. I can call him back. So what were you saying? Something about leaves changing color because the days are shorter?”

“No. Everyone thinks that is the reason. The real reason the leaves change color is because the nights are longer.”

“Same thing." Her eyes search the small table next to her chair.

“It’s not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. The chemicals in the plant cells react to the darkness and the coolness of the long autumn night.”

I breathe slowly, drinking in my epiphany. Didn’t this woman go to medical school? Last time I checked, basic biology was part of the curriculum. Then again, if she had studied life science, she probably would have read about that kinky monkey species—what were they called again?—bonobos, which she obviously hadn’t. She also might have known that the chlorophyll in plants absorbs red and blue light and only reflects green. I reach over and touch a button on my cell phone to see if anyone has called. The screen is blank.

She turns her head slowly back in my direction, a bored expression crossing her face.

“How is this about your…friend?”

“Girlfriend.”

“Right. Girlfriend. Aren’t you getting a little off-topic here?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about this all day. Clearly it is a metaphor for my entire existence.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t you see? The trees don’t follow the sun, they follow his sister. The moon. A woman. Fuck, why didn’t anyone tell me this when I was in eighth grade? I mean, I really should have figured it out myself, that was the year I got my period.”

She closes her eyes.

“We are all out of time. See you next week.”

another poem

The Fog
by Katie Boyden
(5/29/09)

the fog rolls in on the sunniest days
stops us dead in our tracks
‘cause we wanted to play.
makes decisions that we
didn’t know we would make,
and we take credit for those,
that we just shouldn’t take.

I saw your eyes in a traffic sign,
a green, watchful gaze
guiding me from behind.

I tripped on the dirt as I watered the plants,
like Alice and the dandelions
in some silly dance.

the fog is a wine,
the fog is a time,

the fog is a person,
the fog is a line.

I waited and waited and waited that day
I jumped and I shivered,
I sat and I stayed.

but the gloom kept sinking,
while I sat there, drinking
and wondering why,
looking at the white sky
that anyone even cares what I’m thinking.

you finally show,
but you feel like a dream
an imagined, once memory
of past infused steam

I sit and I sit and I wait and I think
look over my shoulder
look down in the sink

if ivy can crawl
and roots can grab hold
and old vines keep fruiting
there’s hope, so I’m told

what is it that flickers
in the light and the shade,
a promise of happiness?
or a dream that will fade

a room full of shadows
a sky full of plans
a wine glass half-empty
the palms of my hands.

yet I just keep hoping
that someone will notice
the mendacity here,
that it will somehow take focus

the edges are blurry
the lines won’t show clear,
and I feel you the most
when you are not here.

On hearing Hungarian Rhapsody at 2am

how did i know? what a silly question, how does anyone know?

how can that freshouttatheegg hatchling know until he takes one wrong grip and slips, swinging his wings till he falls right off the lowest (G) staff line.

bounces off eighth rests (don’t they just look like they’d be elastic and springy?)

downy tufts flying blinking those coal black eyes all pupil

feet up flailing

(air is matter, after all, it will support you if you beat it hard enough)

starts just something

anything

one note in front of the other

bending tendons

letting his feathers shake pleasure resonations

well you can’t just hover in that bass cleft forever, honey

a deep-throated c-sharp is a great start now make it climb

it’s the same way the rain-soaked street cat finds his way to his dish every night

even when dazzled by the eye-stinging stench of rotting eggs and blasts of musty steam from subway vents

and a fat, cawing housewife pouring hot cooking oil (don’t you dare put that down the drain it’ll clog the pipes!) into her neighbor’s plants.

same way Liszt knew c# minor would be the best [ fit ] i guess.

igniting the frank intention given to uncharacteristically big hands

tentative bass (c#-g#-c#) clawing up through moldy caverns

cracked shells glisten.

Listen,

it’s kind of like you’re the yolk and what you used to be—before—is the albumen

you know?

sticky white threads of assurance are the only things connecting you to anything familiar.

And man are they slimy.

But how do you…?

well that’s the tricky part. i guess it’s the spatula, get it?

you really don’t have any way of knowing, until all of a sudden you’re…scrambled.

…fuck. that analogy sounded much better yesterday.

God, it’s like breathing in scalding cooking oil

pop pop sizzle pop POW

catching it on your tongue as it staccatos off the castiron pan.

scarlet dust columns fly

furiously from the keys, explode clouds filling canyons of sharps and flats,

the little bird searches for an odor of memory

only to find amber-trapped ants

who, feeling the scorching shame of anachronism,

try in vain to recede into their segments.

better you, though, than all this sameness.

world spins shameless of the mixing

keeps going, droning, clones seek comfort knowing

that you can never ever

stir things apart.

let’s try a really low C (what is that, five bars below G?)…the lowest C on the board…number 86 if you counted high to low, I believe.

oh but this is c-sharp minor, mind you. it’s very. Very. Different.

hey remember that baby bird? daring to leave his oaken cradle.

fucking around in the baser clefts? look at him now.

trilling

(an entire line endeavor all fits—how??—into just one measure)

reckless

(32^nd notes i should say) around in the ultrahigh 8va.

how did he get up there so fast?

those octaves are way, way too high.

far too dangerous for such a little bird.

but chicks have never been known to listen to reason.

look at him riding those warm, wet updrafts. Ok, so he hasn’t got the fingering (or is it wingering?) right quite yet.

but damn is he trying.

and what about those oversized amber-trapped ants?

struggling with stagnation.

scaling octaves the little bird rolls by shouting words of encouragement.

don’t be sad i know you, your kind and your time. i was a dinosaur once, too, remember?

trust me, there is enough space, for everyone to feel out of place, somewhere.