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    Eye of Water
    Eye of Water
    Eye of Water
    Ebook75 pages30 minutes

    Eye of Water

    By Lydia Millet

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    About this ebook

    Winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
    The poems in Eye of Water are derived from the narratorrsquo;s experiences in what she calls her ldquo;waking.rdquo; She traces inspiration to ldquo;the beginning of myth, to Eve in the Garden of Edenrdquo; and states: ldquo;We could spend our lives unraveling the mistake and discover that life was one great big lsquo;chore,rsquo; and inescapable. And the path is full of missteps and accidents because we cannot (or prefer not to) remember all that got us to that moment. My body seems to be a symptom of the past, so no matter who touches me, all the ghosts are waiting there. The lsquo;chorersquo; becomes how to survive despite the flaws of our humanness that makes us brutal at times.rdquo;
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Pittsburgh Press
    Release dateOct 15, 2005
    ISBN9780822979913
    Eye of Water
    Author

    Lydia Millet

    Amber Flora Thomas is the author of two collections of poems: EYE OF WATER, selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and THE RABBITS COULD SING, selected by Peggy Shumaker for the Alaska Literary Series in 2011. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize, and Ann Stanford Prize, her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Orion Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Saranac Review, and Crab Orchard Review, as well as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and numerous other journals and anthologies. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and faculty member. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1998. She was born and raised in northern California.

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      Book preview

      Eye of Water - Lydia Millet

      PITT POETRY SERIES

      Ed Ochester, Editor

      Eye of Water

      POEMS

      Amber Flora Thomas

      UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

      The publication of this book is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

      Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

      Copyright © 2005, Amber Flora Thomas

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Printed on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      ISBN 0-8229-5893-7

      This book is the winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, chosen by Harryette Mullen. The prize is awarded annually by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc., to the best manuscript by an African American poet who has not yet published a full-length book of poems.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-7991-3 (electronic)

      FOR MY MOTHER AND MY FATHER

      Miré, miré y entonces reviví: sin saberlo

      I saw, I saw, and seeing, I came to life.

      — PABLO NERUDA

      CONTENTS

      Chore

      I

      Oak Leaf

      The Handless Maiden

      Vultures

      A Bird in Hand

      Black Mountain Walk, Collecting Arrowheads

      Spasm

      Off-Season

      Making the Offer

      Last Tenant

      Translating the Oak

      Her Hemisphere

      A Body from the Wizard

      Harvest

      Field Song

      The Fault of Memory

      Waking from a Dream of Childhood

      II

      Woman at a Grave

      In My Hand

      Reputation of Touch

      Dream in Montana

      Magdalene Speaks

      Pomegranates

      Accident of Loving

      Falling Asleep with a Pen in My Hand

      Lake Shore Deer

      Letter and a Crow

      Tree House

      Aubade

      Love Seen

      Marlboros at Dusk

      III

      Dress

      A Woman's Jewelry

      Eye of Water

      Unfinished Gaze

      Elegy for a Suicide

      Night Form

      Oracle

      Miscarriage in October with Ladybugs

      Blooms

      August Bat

      Hotel Reverie

      Water Answering Sky and Mountains

      Calling Home

      Thirst

      Possible Endings

      Erasure

      The Divined Shore

      Acknowledgments

      Chore

      The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

      —GENESIS 3:13

      Blue jays balance on the chicken-wire fence

      while she falls from sleep into the substantial landscape.

      The compost heap's reliquary of household

      fruits ferments under lawn clippings.

      The dog chained to a redwood in the yard

      learns all morning to untangle itself.

      Beauty comes by accident over each scene

      and ends: unbroken silver as ice poses release

      on the clothesline, the subtle disappearance

      of black beetles into heads of lettuce, the radish

      whose red surface becomes a pale interior.

      Like cold water hitting her wrist, suddenly every pore

      knows itself and flinches. Life makes restless

      even the rug she

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