Patricia Lockwood: “History of the House Where You Were Born”
I was reading some Alice Munro, buzzing out of my mind on P.G. Tips. Alice Munro was describing a woman in an Observation Car looking out at the vast Canadian prairies. “What the heck is an Observation Car,” I said to myself. (I find that as a writer it often helps not to know what anything is or what it looks like, because then you can just imagine whatever you want.) So I pictured a big bovine caboose meandering serenely across the grasses, enormous glass windows for its eyes. “Oh my gosh what would its steaks be like, oh my gosh what would its jerky be like?” I wondered, and pictured the Observation Car shot dead and lying on its side. I’d been thinking a lot about prairie towns and railroad towns and small towns in general, and I’d been thinking a lot too about the concept of specialty stores: model train stores that sell you both the railroad and the small town itself; and frame stores with their hanging disembodied rows of gold and black frames, waiting for their art to arrive; art supply stores with their fat tubes of paint; butchers with their glass cases full of the kidneys and chops of any animal; and I imagined the great Observation Car on its side somewhere out in the West, being sliced up to provide all its parts to the people out on the plains, who were hungry, who needed them. (Patricia Lockwood)
–
History of the House Where You Were Born
First it was the house where you were born—
born tragically, with an Appearance—and so
many people crowded to see that the house
mistook them for hungry, and you balanced
your reflection on the blade of a knife
and said, “I have slices to sell them,”
and the house where you were born
became a butcher-slash-
window store,
where squares of glass were carved
one by one off the clear animal itself. Your father
the butcher took huge joy in riding out on the plains,
out into railroad country, ignoring all warm blood
in his path, and staring instead at sparse escaped
herds of black Observation Cars, who grazed on
what grass there was. He shot them and carried
them home on his shoulder, and you grew up loving
strong wild strips of them. Their numbers dwindled,
the survivors grew smaller, and he was forced to sell
their skins for spectacles instead. Then nothing was
left but the gold and black bones, and he hung them
and called it a frame store. You never saw clearly before,
surrounded by flashing glass, so lift your head and look
around: your landscape is taken over by Frame Store,
Frame Store as far as the eye can see.
The frames hang straight and still know nothing.
They believe they are still the body of their animal,
strung and stood up with wire, filled with fat
organs of baby looks. The walls of the frame store
are worse: they were given good coats of white;
they felt paint stroked on and knew what they were:
“I feel hundreds of buffalo nudes being driven off
a cliff,” proclaims the whitest one. Another, even
whiter, feels paint that paint puts on: rouged cheeks
in a row, silver frost
on fruit, and rainbows on raw meat.
One feels, still on the palette, blood next to clear blue sky.
And all feel glass panes everywhere.
And you are the butcher now; you wipe
blood on your blue apron. Then the walls
that surround you know they are white,
are sure they feel a picture
of the knife-sharpener finally going too far.
–
Patricia Lockwood‘s poems have recently appeared in Poetry, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, and other magazines. Visit her at emperoroficecreamcakes.
Hi,
I guess I am too old, and not familiar at all with the poet’s expression that is called poetry. It seems that putting lines into a narrow column is the criteria. Poetry of old was written in Stanzas that bore complete thoughts or at least were followed by a stanza that completed the above stanza. Some of the poetry by exquisite poets at least had a rhythm, were not typical, but at least understandable to a limited degree depending on the times in which they were written. There is also such a thing as free verse, and maybe that is what it is all about. I really don’t know what the poet above is driving at: the past atrocities of whitemen??? Maybe. Is she of Native American descent??? If so, perhaps I am right. I would like to have known what point was she trying to put across. It is not really necessary. I don’t understand and I don’t care for the overall composition.
Maybe it is because I am rather limited in my degree of knowledge of this country or of far past times. I mainly majored in Science, not social, but biological. I just don’t get modern poetic expression because it seems to follow its own rules. That is about it,and I do write poetry most of it with a degree of recognizable old fashioned rhyme. I am not saying because of that it is good.
I suspect my poetic expression would not be of any interest to a publication of your nature. Thanks for reading, hope I did not offend anyone, not meant too.
An Old Guy in His 70′s,
Tony
Your poetry makes me talk in quiet expletives to myself–
IT IS JUST THAT GOOD.
Thanks.
Tony- if you dismiss entire genres of contemporary poetry but don’t have specific criticism or exhibit that you spent any time at all with the particular poem you’re commenting on, why comment at all? why read?
Stick to what you know and nothing will offend you and you probably won’t run the risk of offending anybody either.
Ms. Lockwood, as usual your imagination is stark, engorged, wild and fascinating. The Observation Car roaming in herds will stay with me. This is what I look for in poetry. Something to push me out of the confinement of my own desire my own writing.
They believe they are still the body of their animal,
strung and stood up with wire, filled with fat
This poem is a bell ringing out. Thank you!
Rebecca Loudon
I look forward to ringing the bell at Patricia Lockwood’s inauguration into the Painted Pantheon. If you wish to prevent the ceremony, you will may feel the horn.
I keep turning around and looking at this poem over my shoulder–I wanna read it but am not ready to let go of Love Poem Like We Used To Write It which I have tanked myself up on this morning, and a few other times; since it is what brang me here I feel a little bit like we should leave together.
A newly discovered extra hour of the day, previously unknown Replacements album, forgot and re-found small pile of doubloons, etc. could not delight me more than knowing there are a few more of these out there, thanks writer.
Some of her other poems online — the recent one in Colorado Review, like this one, is Amaze:
http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/features/factories-are-everywhere-in-poetry-right-now/
http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/two-poems-by-patricia-lockwood
http://www.pankmagazine.com/two-poems-17/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/241122
“Love Poem…” in the November 28 New Yorker: absolutely remarkable!
[And, thus, these remarks.] I had not heard of you, but have now; and this is one for the “Best American”. Will be looking for more of you; remember to save some for yourself.