CORINNE DEKKERS
HARD | GLISTENING | OBJECT
1.
A voice returns and some might call that voice a sea.
Sea voice. The voice distinguishes from echo and distinguishes
from siren and the voice on the line moves by water.
The salt of the voice darkens and the salt of the voice
shades and the salt of the voice finds its voicing in the shallows
of an estuary grove a voice among kneeshade a call into mangrove and cedar.
The mangrove holds the estuarine surface and the surface
among kneeshade glasses glazes shows
soft nursery fin and young pole unreared.
The deer place their faces along the pane of the estuarine sea
and see their likenesses come close.
The deer see their likenesses come close and enact
the ritual of water becoming in touch
and believe water to be them
and believe water to be the other and the deer
in their approximation are right.
The glass top of the estuary falls into kneeshade
and the deer’s unison with glazing spills thinking unglazes
the top and makes molten the silver of glass. An echo
turns and the river hears the deer and the water and the alligator
hear too. The alligator spine silts and the alligator mouth yawns
a longing for water and a longing for deer and a longing for water with deer
and the alligator and the water glass darkly
the dark green of a river as one.
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HARD | GLISTENING | OBJECT
5.
As a duck takes to water so you take to me. At night
you offer water carry cup to hand and offer to water
the remembering of drink. We drink, and the water enacts
a mode of remembering and the water remembers
the movement of desert.
The water remembers the movement of water, remembers
the longing of movement through sandstone and current
remembers the movement of open expanse of longing of
and of longing for the long-gone expanse of desert sea
red rock the mud fall noise of longing for longing
and longing for water and the water remembers finding it
the water long longed for suddenly along a dirt
road water seeking water and finding water water rushing
toward rushing water diving and finding solitary the sea
of sequestered sea the longing for surface the earth’s body
the sun scorch and ground the descending suddenly toward
the beloved toward the earth’s surface loving the gravity the seeping through
earth the warmth of hard earth and the warmth of heart hard to be pressed to be wet
by the current of longing stretched for longing. The water remembers the longing and
remembers
the finding and the water’s longing swells. The water warms and swells and when the water
remembers the body the water remembers the salve and there are times the water wants
to go back all at once.
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HARD | GLISTENING | OBJECT
8.
To press against the surface means to press into pressure
a figure of weight that weighs in on encroaches structures into
and this might be where hardness matters.
A matter of hardness concerns the encounter of both difficult
and density: the density of challenge and the density of fiber
of object or objected. Counter the pressure or counter the venture
the complication of a gesture as a mode of applying pressure through
hardness and through density.
The hardness of a pressed book
against the booking of a play.
This play appears as a swarm of deer and the swarm of deer
are ready at the brook: they offer and they press and they
approach the water as if the throng will take them.
The water as a hardness
against which one must press.
The tension of the surface and the deer’s tongue
at the ready are varying degrees of impression.
The moment the deer lifts the pink of its mouth from the ready at the edge
of the river the river returns follows suit approaches the deer
as if the deer were the beloved the swarm long longed for long remembered.
The water remembers as all
things remember in wind.
The deer’s tongue returns to where the deer’s tongue had been
and the river returns in turn with it returns to the mouth of the deer
and remembers the longing of mothers remembers the breath of a brook
over currents racing toward the feet of a yearling and the water remembers the mouth
of the calf unreared. The water remembers and the water passes along the ridge
of the throat sequesters into the darkening glow of the interior color of deerwater
the orange ember of the inside of life and absorbs transubstantiates becomes deer
moves into deer longs for more warms as it goes and longs still for more gold
insatiable in its hard wanting.
Corinne Dekkers received her MFA from Naropa University where she was the Leslie Scalapino and Robert Creeley Awards recipient. Her writing has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Product Magazine, Eohippus Labs, Tarot Manifest, among others, and has been adapted for chapbook, symposium, ritual, and performance. In winter and summer of 2020, she was a writer-in-residence on the banks of the Pascagoula River in southern Mississippi at Twisted Run Retreat. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers, and is an associate editor of Mississippi Review.


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