Prose Poetry Picks

by Alexandra van de Kamp

Nine Steps on How to Survive Yourself When you start taking yourself too seriously, think of whales — the dark secrets of water they swim through, the envelopes of ocean they open with their toothless, bristled mouths. Read a poem in which you learn baleen whales were hunted once for those bristled mouths — the coarse hairs used for corsets, umbrellas, brushes and brooms. The hardware of a whale’s mouth living among men and women whenever it rained, whenever a woman brushed her hair or breathed out. Think of your own hair. How when you moved from your last apartment, you had to sweep the corners and floors and were amazed at its persistence: the dusty strands and S’s curling around chair legs, the wild grasses swaying beneath beds; the skies of it clouding over doors and portholes; the shy locks clinging to the edges of night-tables and beds.  If that doesn’t work, then say corset five thousand times until it morphs into core, ore, galore — an ocean of sound much larger than you could ever worry about. Try not to panic if the evening turns a bitter abrupt green. If the clouds are bruised apples tumbling towards you, and you fear you won’t be able to catch a world wider than you. Be grateful for small survivals: the dimple of blue the blue-bird flies through — that slit in the day, that vial of violet. Don’t worry if your words sound over-poetic or sing too trillingly. What is a trill, anyway? A thrilled sound? A leaky lullaby stuck inside a bird’s mouth? Invite a friend over for a drink and toast to husbands and violins, to the novels you’ll never read: their restless heroines, their badly-lit stairwells and awkward conversations; the names of their meandering, snow-encrusted fields. And if certain words you once loved, elude you, adopt new ones like siblings you never had, like a troupe of performers encircling you, building their archipelagos of patient sound: ochre, aver, circumvolution.   Finally, if all else fails, sidle up alongside the stars in someone else’s poem; stars guiding them on a night drive to Texas; learn from those stars, from their sleepy-eyed tolerance, from their sluggish, whale-like swim through the darkness.

First Sight

The first thing she noticed were his arms. Gossip had told her to look; she simply obeyed, and she was sure she was not the only one to risk a long sidelong glance at the man when he came, carrying a heavy box filled with stationary, into the office. Three-quarters concealed beneath his shirt sleeves, what little she saw might have been a disappointment, were it not for the dark lines which crept down past his his wrists like venal poison, spreading into shapes she could not make out across his hands.

Prison tattoos, Veronika had said. All over, said others, who had made out that Ilya Sobolevsky was a walking criminal canvas. Apart from what was exposed of his arms, however, she did not see anything to warrant the rest of the rumours that had been flying around about him.

She tore her eyes away, not wishing the be rude, and hoping to God he had not caught her staring. No, that sort of first impression was to be avoided.

Instead, she shot a brief glance at his companion, putting faces to the names that had played so prominent a part in the inter-departmental gossip of the past few months. Blake, she pegged in a moment, so well did his manner fit his reputation. She knew, too, that he was American, though there was little to suggest it in his appearance. Being Finnish herself, Anna had little of the prejudice shared by most of her colleagues toward people from different countries: they may have been dealing with the Russian national image, but at the end of the day, it was always just a job, and everyone needed to make their way somehow. American, then, but not in the way she had read about in the papers; no American fitting that description as unreliable at the best of times to work here. No, she thought,  I will believe it when I see it.

 ***

It was not until after lunch that Anna saw them again. Ushered between the rows of files in the Open Room, with Nina spelling out the filing system in dogmatic detail, her voice that of an air-hostess, or a theatre steward, directing them towards their designated seats. It reminded Anna of her first day in the department; very little of the procedure had changed since then. All those numbers, hundreds and thousands of seemingly unconnected combinations of figures, the numerical map which came to dominate the life of the archivist.

Within a year, the pair of them would be able to bark out the reference number of any type of file on record, depending on its contents, departmental code and title. Once they had that down, she thought, the department would be their playground as it was hers; the shelves would acquire that special, musty familiarity she always felt when she passed into the Closed storage and they, too, would find their favourite sections and sub-sections.  This would be their gift, also, regardless what they had or had not done in the past.

The initial confusion the system instilled in new archivists was as much an ice-breaker as it was a steep learning-curve. Nobody, not even the most stubborn or skilled rookie could get through their first week without asking someone for help. And helping-hands soon became close friends in a place like this, where gossip flowed as freely as coffee rounds from the kitchen.

As she returned to her typing, Nina’s words brought an idea to the forefront of her mind.