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    Things as It Is
    Things as It Is
    Things as It Is
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Things as It Is

    By Chase Twichell

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    About this ebook

    "Poems of balanced wildness and instinctual grace."—New York Journal of Books

    “[Twichell’s poems] open out into a stark, sometimes bewildered clarity.” —The Washington Post

    “Suppose you had Sappho’s passion, the intelligence and perspicacity of Curie, and Dickinson’s sweet wit . . . then you would have the poems of Chase Twichell.” —Hayden Carruth

    “A major voice in contemporary poetry.” —Publishers Weekly

    Chase Twichell’s eighth collection lifts up the joy of the moment while mourning a changing world. In Things as It Is—purposefully not things as they are—the present and past parallel and intermingle. Meditating on a litany of formative moments, Twichell’s clear-as-a-bell voice delivers visceral and emotionally resonant lyrics, elegies, and confessions.

    From “What the Trees Said”:

    The trees have begun to undress.
    Soon snow will come to bandage
    the whole wounded world.
    When I was young I eloped with
    the sky. I wore blue-black, with
    under-lit ribbons of pink . . .

    Chase Twichell, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Twichell has published seven previous poetry collections, including Horses Where Answers Should Have Been, which received the 2011 Kingsley Tufts Award. For ten years, she owned and operated Ausable Press.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateJun 18, 2019
    ISBN9781619321946
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      Book preview

      Things as It Is - Chase Twichell

      The Ghost of Tom

      Strangers’ Houses

      The greenhouse door

      was kept locked, but kids

      knew about the key.

      Inside were aisles of orchids.

      It was like being inside a cloud.

      Can that be real?

      That I played in strangers’ houses

      when they were out,

      and no one ever knew?

      The same people had a water

      garden, with a lion-face fountain

      and small gold koi with lace tails.

      Can they live under the ice?

      No, Stupid, said a boy.

      They get new ones every spring.

      The Missing Weekly Readers

      One Sunday noon at 436

      (Gram’s house—the entire family

      referred to their houses

      by street number),

      the first big snow was falling.

      We sat around the table

      in an igloo: the dining room

      darkened and hushed,

      windows a swollen glow.

      After lunch, the cousins

      split up to play. Sam and I

      roamed the neighborhood,

      slipping invisible

      behind the schoolyard’s

      white chenille chain link.

      We looted the small covered

      bridge of the mailbox with great care,

      disturbing no snow.

      Only Sam and I know where

      the Weekly Readers for the week

      of February 16, 1958, reside.

      If you someday find them

      in a surprising place, with a note

      from some kids admitting to the theft,

      please keep it to yourself.

      Maverick

      I spent my one allowed hour per week

      of television with Dad. Maverick.

      I’d completely forgotten about the line

      Smooth as the handle on a gun,

      though I’d sung all the rest by heart

      for many years. Still sing, when alone.

      Who is the tall, dark stranger there?

      Maverick is the name

      (though I misremembered it

      as Maverick is his name).

      Dad corrected papers as we watched

      (Latin teacher).

      We liked the riverboats,

      poker games, and six-shooters,

      Natchez to New Orleans.

      I knew what

      living on jacks and queens meant,

      and the rank of hands.

      I wasn’t really a tomboy.

      I didn’t want to be a boy.

      I wanted to not be a girl.

      Spiral

      At the very center is a seed

      in a permanent state of splitting.

      Inside it a neighbor lifts

      a four-year-old girl onto the mantel,

      cold marble, and looks at her.

      Then a photographer dresses her

      in costumes that reveal

      her secret place.

      My first love promised

      to come back and never did.

      My father told my cousin

      I would make the world’s worst wife.

      I saw what the boys did to the dog.

      What I call my self was innocent

      once, I suppose, an unsplit seed,

      but I have no proof.

      Snapshot with Eyes Turned Away

      Here’s a nurse with a vial of candy pills

      and a miniature stethoscope, one finger raised

      to the camera: I don’t want to be looked.

      Mom still quotes me when she sees me

      self-conscious in photographs:

      You still don’t want to be looked!

      The photographer took the nurse

      to his basement studio. The cowgirl too.

      Also a mermaid with slinky, dragging tail.

      Mom was right upstairs, in his house,

      when he moved aside the tail to get the shot.

      A Red-Hot X

      Wallpaper at Grandma’s had broncos,

      campfires, and cowboys branding calves.

      Wherever I looked, two men knelt

      over a hog-tied calf, holding a stick

      with a red-hot X at the tip.

      I imagined the wound, the shock

      to the mind. Would the calf forget?

      Was there somewhere the calf could hide?

      When I groom the dog, I study

      his haunch, where a brand would go,

      how thin the skin is over the muscle,

      how shiveringly responsive.

      Whenever I think of it they burn the calf again.

      The Children’s Prison

      Everyone’s born in one, a prison.

      Some parents keep children in,

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