The Shape Inside: 12 Sonnets

The Shape Inside: 12 Sonnets

Peter Norman

Some of these poems first appeared in The New Formalist and others in Edge City Review; grateful acknowledgement is extended to the editors of these publications.


© 2003 by Peter Norman


Cover art: Ghost of a Flea
by William Blake


Published by The New Formalist Press


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Nesting Doll

A harmless child’s toy, it brought nightmares
That sent her shrieking into wakefulness,
Summoning us or crying, simply, “Smaller!”
We’d flick off the TV and sprint upstairs
And find her shaking in her thin nightdress
Soaked through with perspiration, stained with pee
Or worse; and she would sob and shake and holler,
Bury her face in stalwart teddy bears,
Seek comfort from a toy in toys. I guess
We should have figured out the source. A father’s
Job, knowing his child. I ought to be
Clairvoyant of the germ causing it all,
The thing my daughter dreaded she might see:
The shape inside the doll inside the doll.

Vigil

White tile. The hum of automatic doors.
No news—the doctor’s hand touches my shoulder.
We wait to hear the grumble of a boulder
Hauled to one side. Workers scrub the floor
To an aching shine, the aprons they wear
Starched and impeccable in pallor;
They purify each grimy corner,
Excise the flecks of skin that gather there.

But these, on their knees, swabbing, are hardly angels;
Their antiseptic fluids aren’t good news,
Just cleanliness, the same old absolute.
Light assaults us from too many angles;
Stealthy, a clock transcribes the shifting Now.
The stone won’t budge. No one is absolved.

Transparencies

I have met beauty, and have been afraid
Of all the tumult it provokes within:
How pulse will set sudden fire to skin,
Leaving a man unmanly and unmade.
I have met wisdom, truth, and they have played
My conscience like a dusty violin:
Untuned, the strings protest, and in that din
I come unstrung; my panic is betrayed.

Most fearsome is the one who draws me near
And raises up a mirror to my lies,
Who urges all pretense to disappear,
Reveals transparencies in my disguise
And, dabbing at my one dishonest tear,
Forces my eyes to see into my eyes.

Departure

One day you will be gone. You will have flown
From here to somewhere distant. I will stay,
Inhabiting a house with all I own;
Coveting only that which flew away.

Our promised parting sickens me with fear:
As amputees feel anguish in the space
That limbs claimed once, will I be cradled near
And battered by the phantom of embrace?

What vision haunts the socket when the eye
Is plucked: do any images remain?
What sound tipples the eardrum when goodbye
Still echoes? Will I dare to hear again?

When you are gone, what remnant will I be?
Imploded sky; evaporated sea.

A Couple Tends the Fire

One day, when years enfeeble them, will she,
Bending to prod an ember, smile despite
The grinding of her cartilage, and light
Another match? Will a spark flare free
And the kindling finally
Ignite?
Red-fringed, black flakes of newspaper take flight,
Ride up the charred shaft of the chimney.
Outside, above, they congregate. Old ink
Arranged on curling paper. A vague shape
Solidifies over the slaking roof.
A passerby might think
He’d spied the billowing folds of a great cape
And heard the fall of an ashen hoof.

Paradise Glimpsed

A demon has consumed the moon’s broad beams
And swallowed us in silence. So my mind
Unravels and I sleep. Possessed by dreams,
I stumble through an empty chamber, blind,
Where dark and light are unified by lack
Of vision; where I Am and I Am Not
Are one. The walls are painted a bright black,
Though color cannot be. Feeling and thought,
Bickering foes, here intermingle; light
Is unified with dark, gladness with grief,
And wedded thus these nemeses create
A dizzying suspension of belief.

Then dawn intrudes, resurfacing my brain,
And opposites are opposite again.

Icon: Three Figures Dining

Herein an abstract of divinity:
Pierced one, paternal one and one unseen
Pass plates and goblets; locked into pristine,
Bright air, atoms seek singularity
Of blood and flesh and spirit; Trinity
Partakes of blood and flesh (its own), the scene
A simulacrum fearsome and serene,
The binge of a cannibal deity.

See how the holy table has been set:
Four places; four straw mats and earthen trays;
Three diners. Palpable, pervading loss.
The needs of one more diner could be met
If only he would sit from whence you gaze:
The final point of an implicit cross.

Bolshevik Tennis!

Haul down the nets. Erase the painted lines
That separate the people from the court.
Blot out every logo: thwart the designs
Of those who would make profit of the sport.

Let service serve; let ranking be repealed.
Cast off your bourgeois white; dress up in red.
Put down the racket you were taught to wield
And raise the racket of revolt instead.

Dethrone the umpire and his random will—
His proclamations have been foul indeed!
Let each man play according to his skill;
Let each man score according to his need.

And some day yet, we shall be free of score:
Love will serve love—game, set and evermore.

Rough Beast

My tongue is varnished, eyes keen,
Omniscient carcass born in a stable,
Wise beyond all years yet unable
To love, baptize beleaguered kin
With that fire. Rather I’ll burn
Familiar flesh in a blaze
Of vengeance, which is mine. Some days
Revive the smart bombs of the year I was born
Thudding and scudding into earth.
Slouching in an innocent womb
Already I knew the ultimate solution,
My solvent design, my salvation,
But, cursed day, I was granted no room
In the battered city of my latent birth.

Retractions

A hush, and the hand of God cranks back
The rusted clockwork. Interstellar gears
Groan with contrary motion; spheres
Retreat along worn tracks.
Lurching into reverse, the Zodiac
Unravels fortunes, elucidates years
Already past, repeals the flow of tears,
Shrinks the first fetus in its sac.

But I am foolish to envision Earth
Turned back. We cannot be devolved
To microbes, innocent and simple.
Redemption is more than inverted birth
And shame won’t be dissolved
Except by blood, spilled in a broken temple.

Posterity

On my last day of exodus I crept
Up the shifting slope of a dune.
Over its crown, in shade, birds dined
On carrion of secrets I had kept
And sediment I had compiled
Here, in my heart’s rill.
Poised upon the malleable hill
I forced my cracked lips into a smile.

I had fulfilled my great ambition:
To leave no mess behind,
To keep my own decay unknown.
The archaeologist on his expedition,
Reaching at last this valley, will find
Only an anthology of bone.

After Stillness

Even the human statue must retire.
Time runs out on a motionless career.
He steps down from the podium. A cheer
Does not resound. Contorted with desire
For dance, his muscles thaw. The loose attire
Slumps round his weary limbs. He sheds a tear.
On the powdered face, rivulets appear—
One messenger sometimes precedes a choir.

It is a short walk to his pension room.
He inches down the sidewalk. An array
Of jugglers and magicians pause and stare,
Enraptured by this specter of a prayer:
A healed limb; a bandage torn away;
A slow, astonished groping from the tomb.

About the Author

Peter Norman was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1973. His work has appeared in magazines and journals throughout Canada and the U.S., including The New Formalist, Edge City Review and The Malahat Review. One of his stories appears in the new Doubleday anthology “Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada”. Norman now lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife, author Melanie Little. His first print chapbook, “After Stillness”, is available from Ottawa's above/ground press.