Songs and Stories of the Ghouls Read online

  Songs and Stories of the Ghouls

  Wesleyan Poetry

  Songs and Stories of the Ghouls

  ALICE NOTLEY

  WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

  MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

  Wesleyan University Press

  Middletown CT 06459

  www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

  © 2O11 by Alice Notley

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

  5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Notley, Alice, 1945– Songs and stories of the ghouls / Alice Notley.

  p. cm. — (Wesleyan poetry)

  ISBN 978-0-8195-6956-1 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8195-7153-3 (e-book)

  1. Title.

  PS3564.079S66 2011

  811’.54—dc23 2011023518

  Excerpts from this book were first published in Crowd, The Canary, Superflux, 5 Trope, Interim, The Café Review, VLAK, Denver Quarterly, Skein, caliphabet, and The New Review of Literature. A selection of poems from the opening section, “Introducing Carthage,” was first published in Grave of Light, New and Selected Poems 1970–2005 (Wesleyan University Press, 2006). The poem “Another Part of Now” first appeared as Backwoods Broadsides, Chaplet Series #94.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

  Contents

  INTRODUCING CARTHAGE

  THE BOOK OF DEAD

  TESTAMENT: 2005

  A Rare Card

  Perhaps Not for You

  Logic

  Within the No-Change Coin Purse

  Another Part of Now

  Voice in Singer

  Beneath the Slab

  Glory

  La Disconnecting

  After Ligeia

  The World I’m Dead In

  The Arrow Luster

  The Color of Altars

  Everyday

  From Testament of the Ghouls

  Unidentified

  Sand

  Light Around Right Shoulder

  Woman in Front of Poster of Herself

  Millions of Us

  Along a Spectral Trail

  No to Angel

  In Motel/Hangar/Mock House

  Moment

  City of Voice

  The Human Ghoul

  City of Ghostly Festivals

  INTRODUCING CARTHAGE

  There was power in that room. I saw it, because my eyes were crushed out

  It’s my judgment holding the mouth

  on this almost face so.

  The scars on my right side won’t fail. I’ve come back wearing them instead of a conscience or a guide

  in order to cause

  a breakaway culture.

  trembling white in black sky spell what it

  vertical lines above sea. they might be; the

  emotional universe it had no

  tone of the old was vicious. care for me

  Who matters it died. There will be no abrogation of this face you can find it in the ground. The magic and on its part I utter anything know it’s in my unlawful hand for I choose a form not easily seen. Face is my own it may look demons but is not a side like this place where they want to walk over and over until all in the ground is fast dead. The light between letters will become in my unlawful hand the conversant weapon so you’ll let me destroy your intentions.

  The face is not kindly. I am dark and in profile to election pervading the fabric and in need of demolition. You still can’t see me, thinking there’s a collective utility. But there is a chaos if I so choose.

  Half of a scarlet rose burst back of the screen behind which your layers are shed. The feeble radiation of quotidian appeasement: it would be necessary to get through the time segment so the scarlet becomes more intense and the murders may go on. I use this against them.

  Was supposed to be endlessly

  interested. I don’t want you.

  driving towards the danger

  coast, I don’t want you. I won’t

  remember the beckoning grant.

  Won’t remember the grave. I

  don’t want you.

  Screamed burned ripped

  It is a fracture that at first

  is taken for a joke. because it’s

  your fi rst break. heavens

  the servant of memory explodes.

  creation have done with it. No.

  it’s not even old. or odd. and when

  no word works

  there can be no notifi cation.

  I have the wrong in my hand.

  this handle staggers and loses

  its furnished shape. how much

  interest they pay (is that what interest

  is?)

  I have this hapless caught. I

  might have caught it already

  remember me cries hooker.

  no she’s up on the hook. still in the

  days of looker and ken.

  don’t you think you ought

  to arrive? if you’re traveling.

  I was fi nding the middle of the

  handle, howling. if it remembers me

  at all. and if it does, leave, I think so.

  The ghoul-girl. There was one to care for, but I can't remember the name.

  The ghoul. Care about the bodies again.

  You will always be the ghoul-girl now.

  To stagger and live; a moonstone will fill the head.

  I see their thoughts. They are round and white and constitute the power. If you drop your thought, you fail. And if you let some fall, and if you let some spill, you are facing it.

  It leaks out and faces you dead. But I keep loving myself she said.

  She will walk me to sleep.

  She walks me to sleep.

  I bore a child said she and cruel to see it perceived as I. Walking here where the city’s open to ghouls.

  You find that magic is dreadful.

  It’s all that I have.

  You are the ghoul-child.

  It was carved on all the walls: no one sees it. No one sees me.

  This is a luminous quality. I’m the ghoul; because it’s what I say.

  Because it’s what I say, I’m in love with that.

  I’m standing where no one sees me; a reasonable object. I could be about anything but I’m not.

  An encomium, they’re everywhere stone white women.

  I keep doing the other one; keep not being the one in question. Not the woman in question.

  Well search home. I shall a ghost be dead.

  The real woman would say real things.

  I scorn to come from your scepter; she will help you express this ville where your shack is on schedule.

  I don’t want to be the real woman.

  I remember a word ‘we would meet again.’

  I’m not the real we.

  I was trained to risk you efficiently he might say.

  In the arena of the civilian. No one important is one. But is a ghoul a civilian?

  The wind blows through this stall for better to lock me in the outside of everything.

  The inscribed words for the known crimes change. Can you keep up? There are so many. Who is the audience for your person?

  It’s burning into my forehead.

  What she reports against you isn’t

  what she reproaches you for

  Building presses through windows,

  faces of who you betray. It’s all

  in a store front now, every
thing is.

  When you protest, you’re no

  longer a civilian: they can kill you.

  I’ve come back without anyone to

  snitch to, I must really be dead. You

  can’t bribe me if you can’t see me.

  “I’ve killed hundreds in honor of

  you.” Cooking the books so alive

  was that way. Coin after coin in the old

  pay phone to hell. “Listen to my music …”

  If anything hurts I’ll suppress someone pushing my lace.

  If they offer everyone drugs so you can go visit your

  friend to forget that the sheets are soaked. That’s

  some nurturing blood, he said. I was shot through. They

  hire people to take care of it so you’ll continue to support

  the red flood; cloth, I was whole cloth saturate. No one

  will ever forget you stet. Can you find my face yet?

  The power gathers around broken windows. It witnesses

  the overthrow each time one destroys Rome from within

  the sepulcher of Carthage. How do you do that I open this

  mouth Delenda est.

  mouth Delenda est.

  The city I founded I will found again. Running through the cards, you’ve used all the cards up. The city I founded I will found again. These are the new ghoulish cards with their own magic lice made licit. Suit of blood, suit of crania, suit of viral obbligatos, suit of blunting salt. The city I founded I will found again. And as in those days was there not found so false a lover going on the ground as whose power I will slay this new city’s burning into my forehead. I can’t see it, give me something, you can have dread. Can I have justice? Never, what can I have this new city burning into my forehead.

  Felix the fortunate and how was this city first purchased? A woman who founded it said to be betrayed as if no matter your courage you’re only haunted by sex. There was always another story a different form of betrayal. She will enter the country desperate powerfully cognizant, she has done this. Remonstrance guilt is freezing me inside the ghoul tatters midnight glass but I’ll be frequent and not stand aside even a monster can found a city don’t ask me to open up I’m out here. This is what I can give you back we were invaded assimilated tossed but now are not repugnant to each other because called ‘lost.’ I already know this song but I’ve already founded this city before when I’ve forgotten all the rest streets fire opal so you see. There’s no moisture in here because I never cry, you say I don’t know which part I’d be supposed to cry for. A tear became a rate of exchange for goods of recognition but that was before the new founding; so what is the name of this city? Is it really Carthage; I think that name will do for now. Do you haunt it to devour our condition again speaking this older way it’s been so done but I’ve never been here before.

  I know what happened to you; I know

  you can hardly stand

  I never did anything but run from

  the phantoms in your head.

  You cost me my house and body

  when I come back a Medea

  to haunt your controls I’m no

  poor girl now; have you ever seen a

  black cape like this? I can still

  shake you up by pressing my finger

  to your chest, now that you’re

  old enough to have failed at the good.

  Oh haven’t you? What do you know

  except for this haunt I am?

  The whole story was a late lie. Why would she kill KEPT her children? In this we cite city she didn’t; WE know what’s true and not the tradition a blood of misbegotten treason. Scars tell a different story in high voice I was possessed by the creations of a lurid culture spear obsessive they came to take. No this is over and the scars say don’t remember, though don’t you? Can you make our art they say? Shadows the scars pronounce think with us.

  I had no love at that time and wore

  Is the color bad for me (black) and he said you should dress like the others and I said I’m not like the others. I wasn’t looking for clarity. I’ve never known anyone whose mind was clearer than mine.

  He left her because he could always get another one. Or he is trying to kill me to have everything I should have the smallest part of if at all. They weep for the cut-up women in their documents as if they wanted to kill to grieve. The difference is that I’m slipping back further to try to search for my own. I’m sure I can find my documents.

  How have you escaped destruction I am always on a trajectory going back I’m in time differently from you. In one sense I survive by having been eradicated and if your culture has been razed you will understand me. The magic is always in my hands and in my crushed-out eyes whatever is deleted returns.

  On the banks of whose kindness, nowhere, they blindly struck with hands that the fires leap, when I of the earth and the overturning of prayers took my blankets and entered in order to face the other ghosts or ghouls. I knew our arts could make life bearable: I must be nothing I have been in recent times. I will mix a potion for our use a substance to prevent the present as it has been known— your present— for hasn’t there always been another one transpiring? The murders are already done but since we are already ghosts from them aren’t they eradicated now? I must remember a new past and not the old present. This document records a possibility of power back here, which I have access to by betraying my old life and entering that camp where I won’t remember my details. Already I speak of the fact that life was never new, but as I have returned to another past, may it renew. It has a thousand wide approaches and gates open on all sides many more than four where I imagine I have always plied my craft.

  I am warriors warriors warriors

  Critic of parts the plaintiff

  It remains to be seen if the designs in your hair

  are permanent, inflicting an identity or

  beauty—which is it—of plaits and paths

  above your eyes.

  Do you have to be a warrior? I ask her

  I’ll find you again before I’m finished

  and we’ll fight them, because we can’t

  imagine another cure for our resentment

  she says, it’s what pushes me on

  I hear someone screaming out here

  but she’s recorded speech to be sampled

  by who makes her his: he’s gone

  I never want to see you again but I want to

  sing this song

  There’s still an assault on my shadow. A tree with symbols hanging from it. In my own self or structure. You can’t be omitted for I’m a protective object. The inscription all over me places you near a home. They kill you off and tell of their map bleeding from your forehead. But anything can protect us. I took the child and enfolded her in my flatness so she wouldn’t be harmed. See to this crime they said; the object I am drew the child even further into itself, for justice would never help her. As everything seems to be a made thing, when I make this for you, out of the same mouth anything comes from. I’m holding you as close as I can. I cover you.

  What were you doing when I thought you were dead, weren’t you dead? The history of Carthage has been related by numerous ancient men but the Tyrian princess Dido founder of the city cannot be mentioned except in relation to her tragic passion for Aeneas; an important production of little masks characterizes the Punic world you are hellenized you worship Demeter and Kore. The young woman is dressed in a skirt of folded wings upon her sarcophagus our knowledge of the religion is lacunar but it is possible that one worshipped nothing except for untrue but powerful images and symbols perhaps ‘worship’ means ‘use’ as it should. Was there once again but this time I knew he was really dead there is a poem in the scars on my liver a written history or map which is beautiful but only covers me I must be the child who isn’t listening so I’ll hear. Destroyed in 146 B.C. your poetry is dreadful, vacant and inept and ours will survive as long as our empire lasts: every present writer says. Towards
changes hands of configuration each small mask is a word to cover your lack that is where language stands on no foundation but the wars it has always upheld for if your ways were destroyed and your poems broken and ploughed into the salted earth what would you be? The ghoulishness of this project is affirmed by any style and there is no ‘way forward’ but your empire’s way.

  If you meet me here I was Lady

  if I meet you where you were killed

  then I’m no longer a civilian if I was

  your drug. There’s nothing to replace what

  you need from the soil; salted it’s perfect

  your Lady. If you meet me here. (say the scars)

  If I met you as Lady, the senses of

  where you are now; if I met you without

  a conscience: why should I have one

  when you’re asking me to assuage yours?

  The gas is always free when you’re dead.

  There’s no money where you meet me, too bad.

  Millions of bodies winged ghouls or souls is there enough space for them here as they return? Insects engraving themselves into pages they keep coming back. Someone says, she has to be dreaming so you’ll see me. Do you see the small masks? Small since so many have died; and so many of their words have disappeared. The conqueror language is struggling with the masks but doesn’t want to break them, doesn’t want old breath to escape. In the form of a sign, because I wear the white skin of a ghoul. You don’t know what I mean, do you? You don’t know what any of us mean.

  Turned away, the art is to