Clatter Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Neil Hilborn

  ISBN 978-1-943735-22-8

  Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

  Minneapolis, MN 55403

  All Rights Reserved

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you do choose to share it with your friends, or if you came across this eBook for free, please note that Button Poetry is a small, artist-run organization, and we rely on your support to continue doing this work.

  Thanks!

  I would like to thank Anny, Hieu, Sarah, Abbie, Ryan, Michael, Sam, and Dylan, without whom this chapbook and the poems in this chapbook would not be possible. I would also like to thank Orange Quarterly, in which “A Catalog of Things I Hate about Her, to be Displayed in the Event that She Leaves Me” first appeared.

  Author photo courtesy of Hieu Nguyen.

  Cover photo courtesy of Hennepin County Medical Center.

  Cover design by Hieu Nguyen.

  https://www.buttonpoetry.com

  https://www.facebook.com/neilhilborn

  Table of Contents

  American Museum of Natural History, Butterfly Exhibit, New York, Winter

  Independence Day

  A Catalog of the Things I Hate about Her, to be Displayed In the Event that She Leaves Me

  On Being Hung Over as Balls and Eating a Pickle

  Loving the Impermanent

  Hey Mr. Weekend

  Mr. Gone

  Como Conservatory, St Paul, Winter

  Clatter

  Otsego County

  Downtown Greenway Extension, Minneapolis, Summer

  Leaving Sonnet

  Como Conservatory, St Paul, Summer

  The Drunk Gear

  Museii Vaticani, Vatican City, Summer

  The Fence I Never Climbed, or, There Is a Parking Lot where Once I Broke My Arm

  Leaves Falling on Toilet Paper

  In Which the Author Uses Dance as an Allegory to Describe Healing

  Popp Butterfly Conservatory, Oneonta, New York, Summer

  English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet or the tragedy of Lear has no words for the shiver or the headache.

  —Virginia Woolf

  The lights dimmed, the singing stopped.

  —Louise Erdrich

  American Museum of Natural History, Butterfly Exhibit, New York, Winter

  A butterfly’s wing is broken and immediately

  I think “That butterfly doesn’t work”

  like a window or idea works, like the butterfly

  is something that needs fixing but this butterfly

  in this exhibit can get from arm to flower

  and it will be dead inside of two weeks

  anyway and it’s not going to breed,

  so what is it supposed to do

  other than look pretty? And it does,

  in the way that all those Greek sculptures

  would bore us if they had arms.

  Independence Day

  We celebrate by never leaving

  each other’s side, ever. It’s not codependent

  because we don’t live in the same state

  and we never get to see each other,

  damnit. My first kiss was under fireworks

  and I know this isn’t my last kiss

  but I imagine it is in the way that I always

  imagine I have leukemia or brain cancer

  or testicular cancer or sometimes, you

  know what, I know I’m not dying

  but I do have bipolar disorder and that

  feels like dying once every two or three

  days, it feels like going under the unders,

  it feels like your heart exploding slow,

  and I’m not going to die, I’m not, not while

  she’s here, not while there is something I have

  yet to do, but I am only twenty two and I hear

  it gets worse. If it gets worse maybe she won’t

  love me anymore. If it gets worse I won’t even

  be able to tell her how it’s getting worse.

  A Catalog of the Things I Hate about Her, to be Displayed In the Event that She Leaves Me

  All of the food in her fridge has rotted

  or is rotting. She duct tapes her bed frame

  back together and declares it fixed. The bugs

  are always pouring in her windows. There is a candle

  that is actually the remains of hundreds

  of candles. There are books

  she will never read and a typewriter

  she does not know how to use. She complains

  about the mess as the throws her bra

  on the floor. A stack of books is holding up

  her bed now. She is cooking now. Once, a squirrel

  climbed into her window and she wanted

  to name it. She wants to keep the cats

  with mange. She buys boxes upon boxes

  and leaves them empty. The lightbulbs

  are burning out one by one. She is sitting

  in the dark, reading

  On Being Hung Over as Balls and Eating a Pickle

  Oh, pickle, you are the best pickle

  to me. You are the exact opposite

  of the person I am and much more

  like who I want to be: someone

  who doesn’t drink lots and lots

  of rail whiskey and then wake up

  because someone is literally using

  a jackhammer outside. A jackhammer.

  Really dude? Fuck you. I’m gonna eat

  this pickle and then murder your pets.

  Loving the Impermanent

  You will know it has to end soon when,

  in the car, she puts on your least favorite

  song by your favorite band. Sing along

  with her. Smile

  like you wrote the damn thing.

  After the fourth time, fully clothed, you make her

  orgasm and she does not reach for your belt,

  masturbate in the shower again

  because you are not yet desperate enough

  to pull her into the nightmare that is the way people

  have sex with you. In bed, you will face away

  from her while she holds you so you can cry

  without her noticing.

  When she asks what you are

  thinking it will have been the same as this entire week

  I want to kill myself I want to

  kill myself I want to kill myself

  but you will say breathing. Just her

  breathing.

  When you are writing this poem

  in front of her, you will actually feel nothing.

  You will like it. Do not make eye contact.

  Scribble so she can’t read this upside-down.

  Scribble more. She is so curious. When she

  laughs at the book in front of her, don’t ask why.

  You have read it. You already know. She is asking

  what you are writing. You are saying nothing. You are

  scribbling. She already knows you are

  writing you are writing you are writing.

  Hey Mr. Weekend

  In an alleyway off 7th Place

  I watched my friend as he entered

  his forty-third hour of a blackout

  and then as he entered

  a cop car, though “entered” is

  a kind way to say “was thrown in.”

  The alleyway is boring and smells

  of urine. I walked through it

  yesterday and I won’t say I had

  a flashback because flashbacks

  are for people who have actually

  experienced things, but I did

  see Bobby. Bobby like a drunk

>   ghost. Bobby like I stared at a mirror

  in the dark and said, too quickly,

  Whiskey Bobby Whiskey Bobby

  Whiskey Bobby and there he was,

  staggering and saying hello to my shoelaces.

  Bobby has been sober for a year now.

  I saw him at work today, and he still

  has the scars on his head from the time

  he misunderstood a windshield. The hair

  no longer grows there so he shaves

  his head because the past is a megaphone,

  the past is always yelling and Bobby’s

  just saying welcome home motherfucker.

  Bobby has been better for a year.

  I haven’t let him hug me in a year.

  I don’t let anyone touch me, but that’s

  my problem, not Bobby’s. In the year

  Bobby has gotten better, I have

  been losing friends like they are shitty lines

  in a poem I want so badly not to

  hate but I’m a red pen, the biggest

  red pen you ever seen, and here I am

  acting like Bobby is the sick one.

  Mr. Gone

  I guess I believe there simply was a fight,

  that there was some penultimate then last straw,

  and, burning, he walked out into the night.

  My father is a good man. He is often right,

  so often it turns out to be a flaw,

  the flaw that makes him impossible to fight;

  I am kissing his hand now. In my sight

  he is still my father, not the man who clawed,

  screamed, and, burning, walked out into the night,

  no, not him. He recently began to write

  me letters. At my house now we receive mail

  from, not for him, all written while in flight.

  The letters are fading. Once in a while

  he manages to turn on his phone and call

  and explain why he walked out into the night

  but why explain and bring it all to light?

  I want there to be a reason he is gone.

  I want to believe there simply was a fight

  and, burning, he walked out into the night.

  Como Conservatory, St Paul, Winter

  Today we are in the Sunken

  Garden. We have come here because

  outside of this greenhouse it is cold

  and dry and the nosebleeds

  are beginning, but you have come here

  because I asked you to. We watch

  as a family winds its slow parade

  around the fountain. These girls

  are climbing onto and jumping from

  everything. These girls are indestructible.

  I am thinking about what our children

  would look like but when you ask

  what I am thinking I tell you nosebleeds.

  You tell me about your ex-boyfriend’s

  brother’s wedding, three years ago

  in the very spot where we sit, and this

  seems wildly appropriate given both

  that we will definitely not be married now

  and that, in moments after you had fallen

  asleep on my chest, those endless, nightly

  moments in which I imagined our wedding, it was

  always here, in this spot, this fucking spot where now

  we sit and I want to kiss you now but I do not

  tell you because it is no longer

  surprising or sad. You are getting up

  to leave and maybe if I sit here

  long enough, here in this place I have

  seen in dreams, in dreams from which

  I barely wake even when I am awake, dreams

  of waiting, waiting for god to appear

  and touch both of us and say I Am Here, if I sit

  here long enough our children will climb

  out of the flowers; if I sit here long enough

  you will go out, try on other loves, and come

  back to me; here long enough you will appear

  down the aisle, white, white dress, your father

  beside you, flowers in hand.

  Clatter

  It is impossible to imagine a color

  you have not seen. I can’t call my mother

  because she makes me panic. When I

  say I am crying what I really mean

  is that I want to cry but can’t. Instead

  of dying, the jellyfish simply ceases

  to move. Glass moves like any other

  liquid, but slower. Sex is another way

  of communicating with your body

  like self-harm or sign language. I complete

  five crosswords a day because it stops

  the panic. Trucks are downshifting

  on Main Street. Most of what I do I do

  to stop the panic. I never cry at things

  outside of my head because they all

  seem so far away. Hair is partially

  composed of cyanide. Napalm

  is just gasoline and plastic. I am just

  carbon and bad timing. If I were someone

  else I think I would still be mentally ill.

  It is impossible to imagine a color

  you have not seen.

  Otsego County

  You have come here, out of the rain

  that is your life’s work, and you find instead

  that this is your life, this right here, this girl

  you are kissing who you have flown

  across the country to kiss; if our lives

  are made of the moments we are

  supposed to experience and the moments

  we use to avoid those moments, then your life

  is built from those running away times, those times

  in which you were actually happy as opposed to

  just saying you were happy, your life

  is made of suitcases: you are, in fact,

  a suitcase: you are built to hold

  only what you need and as what you need

  becomes what you needed you empty

  and fill yourself and you have come here,

  out of the rain, mostly full already,

  full as can be expected from an emptier

  such as yourself, and this girl, this girl

  of sun hair and the always fingers, this girl chromatic,

  this girl who is enough you to know you

  but thank god not enough to be you, this girl

  is filling up the last, not desperate

  but almost, before unfillable bit.

  Downtown Greenway Extension, Minneapolis, Summer

  The train runs by this bike path. I know

  a train is coming because the rails

  are singing. The train shifts, first blue,

  then red, and I am thinking about how

  I know what red shift is and can picture it

  despite never having seen it. Two Somali

  women are walking down the path. They are

  here in Minnesota because someone

  in their country wants to kill people

  like them in their country. The train blows

  back their hijabs like we actually are in

  a Western not a Midwestern. If we spend

  our entire lives believing in the impossible

  or, in the absence of that, the unseen,

  if we are all only the sum of what we put

  out into the world, then where do we go now,

  and where do we go when we die? I was sure

  I would be dead before turning twenty one,

  sure I would never drink, sure my father

  would come back to me, I am twenty

  two now, my father texted me once on my birthday,

  I drink more often than I don’t, and where

  did all that belief go? I spent so much time knowing

  what is now wrong, knowing like I know

>   the scars on my face and red shift, and I hear

  the train now. I know it’s coming because the rails

  are singing. I can’t see it yet, but it’s there.

  Leaving Sonnet

  You told me once that you would break my heart.

  I asked you not to be such a goddamn

  cliché, but then you left me because part

  of you was still broken. You say some man

  pried open the cracks of you, dug holes where

  once there were none, so now you just cannot

  love me how I deserve, and darling, therein

  lies the problem: you can you can you can

  you can you can you can you can you can.

  Your reasons why are no good reasons why.

  We said we should not fall in love and then

  we showed each other our most quiet

  scars: my wrists, your upper thighs, and now you say

  this too easily: you say you cannot stay.

  Como Conservatory, St Paul, Summer

  I am, again, again, in the Sunken

  Garden. I am no longer in love

  with the woman I was in love with

  mostly here, mostly in dreams, truthfully,

  and it hurts now like my gone

  wisdom teeth or the limbs I imagine

  losing, all the amputations I will

  not live long enough to need, and I keep

  coming here expecting to write The Poem,

  by which I mean the final thing

  that makes me completely not

  miss her, but I keep seeing her in ferns,

  track lighting, lilies, radiators, pilot

  lights, new paint, and I miss her like, like

  I said, what once was a part of my body;

  I have heard that I am the sum

  of what I put into the world, and for

  so long I put “I love you, darling”

  into this and every other world

  I could get to listen, so what am I

  now, now that that love is gone?

  The Drunk Gear

  You bike slower when you are inebriated.

  You call this The Drunk Gear, as though it were

  funny. You have not gotten in accidents

  because as of yet you only drink at night,

  but once it was November and it began

  snowing. First you pretended

  you were in space. Then you biked by

  your ex-girlfriend’s because why not