An exlusive excerpt from NBA-winning poet Nathaniel Mackey's newest volume, Nod House, out November 21 from New Directions.
SOUND AND SOMNOLENCE
—“mu” fortieth part—
A light, floating slumber
it seemed. Buoyant heads,
we lay like melons, the
pond our melon patch,
bobbed,
kept endlessly afloat…
Risen waft, anabatic
whiff.
Buried heads brought back
to life… Buried our heads in
Erzulie’s loin-musk, imagined
more than real, all the more
penetrant,
punishment the moon doled out…
We awoke blinking, blinded by
the water’s wry perfume. Blinked
and blinked. Blinked. Blinked
and
blinked again, bobbing heads
up to our noses in water, the
pond a pool of reflection gone
dark…
It was a dream we were hounded
by, Erzulie’s frog-princes yet to
be kissed… We’d have blown
ourselves up and the world
as
well so exhausted we were, all a
banality, all the world in one boat…
Nubs what were fingers at arm’s
end, only knuckles to hold on
with. What we wanted withdrew,
ab-
stract assembly, said we’d someday
meet among rocks… Run brethren
obsessed with Erzulie, recollecting
her perfumed inner thigh. Aroma
we’d
have given an arm to draw the likes
of, synaesthetic brush, bouquet. Risen
scent, given our wish, would lift
us, an expended we underlay all
else. “Love’s made bed my hounfour,”
she’d
say, “love’s bed Agwé’s boat.”
Wafted
aroma translated had us up to our
mouths in water, pond water up to
one’s upper lip. Insecure hold on
where one was, nose above water,
love’s
amphibious hush… Though it was
land we were on, stomachs in our
throats, scared, not-right-if-not-scared
no solace, better to be wrong we
thought…
Or so we thought, said we thought,
laughed as we spoke, smoke rings
floated, we were Dread Lakes eldren,
soapwater cigarette smoke… Smoke
bubbles lifted our lungs up our throats,
it
wasn’t virgin earth we were on. Nothing
lay north, no way to keep our feet. Crept
and kept falling, fell, got up again, Crab
Alley
lay to our left. Abrupt falling off of the
earth to our right, everything lay to our
left… A frog pond aperture it was we
looked in thru, synaesthetic mingling of
mud
and perfume, not-yet princes yet to be
kissed, fairy tale yet to come true… Our
princess would come someday, soon come,
prophecy said as much… Dread Lakes’ dry
bed
the bed we lay with Erzulie in, a slow song
song even so. So slow sing was less what
we did than survive it, frogs in a nearby
pond
infiltrating sleep, a bit of something heard
before
dozing
off
