“Prelude to Bi / sym / me / try” by DENISE LOW

Prelude to Bi / sym / me / try

By Denise Low

(August 2020)

Size: 1-7/8” x 2.2.5”

I would rather be an artist, but my jerky hands cause poor handwriting and drawing ability. Words must suffice, most often. But still I desire to replicate my surroundings, and so from my teens I have kept journals with inelegant calligraphy, glyphs, watercolor washes, and rough sketches. They map the slippage between ideas and embodiment. The mistakes are my honesty. This tiny book for Eileen R. Tabios sits in a timeline among my other journals. All archive sediments of thought. Robert Smithson writes, “One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion” (82). This is detritus. Inscribing paper is a process that follows principles of physics and geology. 

Twin pages of books parallel the mind’s cataloguing system of perception and memory, a continuous interaction. Louise Gluck has the brilliant lines ““We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.” The second and subsequent encounters with any experience are metaphorical. A  word approximates a category, with adjectives adding nuance. Each time I taste cinnamon, I recall all previous sticks of rolled bark, powders, granules, mixtures with sugar crystals, and the spice tins and bottles used as cinnamon containers. Poems are uneven reflections of reality, aligned somewhat like the bisymmetry of left hand and right (write?) hand. Mittens are bisymmetrical also. For the last 20 years I have worked with 19^th century Northern Cheyenne texts formed with narrative, connotative glyphs. These influence this small book.

Layers of paper accumulate in a yellow folder by my desk. They often reference bisymmetry in all its guises—mirrors, Leonardo da Vinci’s coded handwriting, mementoes, hands, lovers, photographs, paintings. Mixed heritages in our family bloodlines is another reference—with use of some Tsalagi / Cherokee syllabary and much of the Roman alphabet. Excerpts from this collection appear here, altered by the requirements of physicality, in this case miniaturization and a Pilot pen. Bi / sym / me / try is an organic and inorganic project with false starts, approximations, antecedents, consequences, hopes. My mind is on this white page. Your mind is making some version of a duplicate as you read this. Greetings.

Bi

sym

me

try

By Denise Dotson Low

Fitch Mountain, 2020

for Eileen R. Tabios

Excerpts [from]:

Reflections on Bisymmetry

A shining

a mirror’s 

spinning face—

imparts

difference,

inexact

symmetry.

A movie is a seamless

mirror and false.

Reality has no beginning

and multiple endings

all hidden

but one.

“I have always preferred

the reflection of life

to life itself.”

Francis Truffaut

These inked 

letters

have

hinges.

Leonardo da Vinci wore

backwards script with

his left hand. In a mirror

the letters reverse to

normal order.

D.L.     L. D. 

Which of my

hands is

Lenape / Munsee?

Which of

my hands

is British /

German?

My heart on the left side

has a parallel heart

on the right side

too fragile to detect.

“We look at the world

once, in childhood.

The rest is memory.”

 Louise Gluck

At night I hear

lullabies from a 

second mother 

(Eve)     (Lilith)

Memento

Mother disappears past walls

of cut-up puzzles folded 

among jumbled heights—                

no lullabies but instead, pauses.

In the upstairs room under elms

stars pelt the glass.

Hunger returns. Under my chin

white ruffles loop endlessly.

The curved bassinet I remember 

to this day, its dusty pink,

how I breathed

within its woven wicker.

Later on the back porch

I saw where she stored it 

where generations later

I return.

69

Not a bisymmetrical     sex act

only simple     whole numbers

numeric anagram     flipped 

divisible by three     not a three-way

not equals     not touching.

not spooning     but nearly so

mathematics’     double entendre

shorthand     proposition

mated nude     stick figures

squiggle lines     curlicued

yoked figures     unconsummated

integers          always / never lovers     

Left Brain / Right Brain 

The right hand connects to the left hemisphere. Shazam!

left hand to the right with stained-glass tangerines

assembled by the wizard cranking my Oz brain.

The top of the heart connects to lower chambers,

a folded paperdoll with names of all my lovers

tattooed in cursive spider veins no one can read.

The body rises like a skyline tower, torso and left leg,

right leg. A chancy profile like cards: “The right-hand 

self / devoted to architecture / the left-hand self not.” 

The left hand cuts playing cards thick, beat ‘em quick. 

Cut them thin, bound to win. A left-handed cut for Tarot 

Arcana shows fate. A right-handed cut decodes the stars.

Tell the daydreams. Forget the nightmares. Travel and return

at a secret ratio hidden in all algebra problems. Tell me,

how fast does a three-pound brain speed into the next train?

[Excerpts from “Lost”]

Lost 1

Lover’s absence

            2 nights gone:

            streetlight as sun,

            moon, & friend.

Lost 2

Lover’s presence:

            2 nights returned

            sun lights streets,

            diamonds, & moon.

[Excerpts from] First Contact 

Vineland     Markland     Forestland

Anno / Domin / i     Domin / ion     Domin / ate

(My     Lenape / Munsee     blood runs     blends.)

Start with     first blow     first     bellow.

Irish     traveler     not even      the first.

Saint Brendan     512-520 A.D.

Vines suitable     for wine,”     he wrote.

milch / milk     traded for furs     before they     would leave.

“Skraelings,”     those who     wear skins.

New     Found     Land.

Two worlds     [oceans between]     my grandfather     spanned.

“They     encountered     one another     and fought,”     Erik the Red.

[Excerpts from “Hands”]

Hands 1

Chaco Canyon: 

The hand’s thumb protrudes left of a line

bisecting vertically the palm.

Hands 2

Remember     Sequoyah     So-whi-li     George Gist     [Cherokee]

He assembled     the Tsalagi [Cherokee]     syllabary

and was     prosecuted     as a witch.     As punishment

they cut off     his fingertips     but left     his thumbs.

Hands 3

My wand releases     spells of letters.

Hands 4

I hold a hand mirror     to reflect the past

exactly halfway.

Hands 5

My stubby thumb     is a 2^nd tongue.

How are you? Do-i-ju? [Cherokee]

Comment allez     vous?      ¿Como esta? 

My clumsy plume says     hello.

Hands 6

Its pale knuckle     wrinkles smooth

when my thumb     reaches around

the pen to a     cradle of fingers—

automatic stab-glide-loop

of cursive and dots. . . .

[Excerpts from] “Kaw Valley Wings”

Kaw River Wings 1

My armspan     is a forgotten     measure

line a cubit—     half-length     of a hand.

Kaw Valley Wings 2

Below live     the mussels     Ouichita     Pink Paper

with wings     of thin shell.

Kaw Valley Wings 3

Buzzard shadows     stencil fog

overlapping     an eagle’s     black wings.

Kaw Valley Wings 4

My shoulderblades     are scaffolds

for matched     wings.

*

My grandmother’s grandfather

Big Miller fought Lenape /

Munsees and killed.

My Lenape /Munsee great-

grandfathers / uncles killed

Big John Miller.

*

I mourn

my [Lenape] relations

killed at Gnadenhutten, Ohio,

March, 1782.

*

I mourn

Big Miller

killed in Ohio, 1784.

Ambidextrous

Let my left eye solve quadratic equations

and my right eye parse Picasso.

Let me sign the check upside down with my right hand

rightside up with my left.

Let me read traffic signs blindfolded.

No, just kidding. Let me brake left-footed or right.

Let me track two rabbits to the compost pile

Let me aim left-eyed and shoot right-handed.

Let me watch sunrise and offer tobacco smoke.

Let me offer tobacco smoke at moonrise.

[Variations on] What Line

Within my child’s palm

cross: life line

     love line =

croix mystique

     X

What moment did you grip

     my hand and not let go?

These I hold onto”

     gray Sonoma rocks

with porcelain threads

     shot through

Earthquakes     gently rock

The Geysers’     crazed

fractures in     land from

the San Andreas     strike-slip

fault line     throughway

North ←     South     →

What line     changes

our side     to theirs?

[Untitled]

Electrical     current     pulses—

my     heartbeats.

Variations on Keening

"We would watch him look up and his face go keen.”

William Stafford

My father’s face went keen. Cicadas droned as

darkness walled us in. His eyes were echoes

on fire. He spoke kennings, his wise irises

cobalt blue. Second-sight prophet’s eyes

proved his cutting tools. Dark fathoms 

lay buried in river mud. His eyes pierced.

Father was a fisher of meat. We ate animal kin

darkening love with tang. Beauty snares eyes.

A sunfish reddens under a keen-bladed knife. 

Sequin scales flake. Its eyes darken into a stare

beyond ken. I keen. My father’s twin-star eyes 

gaze equally into and out of the dark. 

[Excerpts from] Portal

                                    after Louise Gluck

Enter Solstice

“What follows the light

is what precedes.”

Cross the threshold

of ghosts incarnate.

Lost

Lost? Yes, again the stars fall
on 13th Street where a house, now demolished,
was my home. I was young.

Funeral dirges sound from the building
and hearses ferry the dead. I was young

and swung on the backyard tire swing

one late October afternoon under red leaves

drifting like red stars to my feet.

I was young and then was gone like the house.

An old woman remains in my place.

[Variations on] Buffalo Jump

The cedar-lined hill is a kill 

site where giants died.

At the buffalo jump past Topeka

we are almost home.

below lie scattered bones

cross-hatched by flint

knives and scrapers.

A Northern Cheyenne elder

told us the land changes—

just more slowly.

In recent years more cedars

grow here & unbroken

stands of bluestem.

At nightfall the Milky Way spiral 

releases all the ghosts.

Afternoon sun hunkers

on a single line

of fallen sky. Forever.

Geographic Cure

Take me to bed where we no longer repose.

I left to go hiking the beach’s

intricate crisps.

Pinking-shears cut hippy Brazil

to fit Africa’s curved Atlantic harbor

one smooth coast.

The Arctic and Antarctica 

shadow each other. Winter is summer,

summer winter.

I touch your everyday skin of netted pores 

A quick flip I touch wet plum: 

your inside mouth

Fractals of mollusks litter a shoreline.

Trace the sanded ledge where

we once settled in salt.

[Excerpts from] Bisymmetry

*

I open a map     scaled one-to-one,

read it as fast as I can but     cannot

catch up with     Jorge Luis Borges

*

Press my torso     into garden mud

for a full imprint.     Voilà.

*

Scatter Pompeii     ashes over a vase. 

Wait 2000 years.     Voilà.

*************

Notes: 

*Excerpts from “Reflections on Bisymmetry”: Lenape and Munsee are bands of Indigenous people also known as Delawares. Three federally recognized Delaware nations exist, a number of state-recognized, and many unaffiliated in the diaspora of this great people originally located in places now known as New York and New Jersey. My memoir The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) describes my heritages. The quotation from Louise Gluck is from the poem Nostos, from her book Meadowlands (Harper Collins).

*”Left Brain / Right Brain” incorporates a quotation from Karla Kelsey from her book Of Sphere Essay Press), p. 13.

*Excerpts from “First Contact”: The Saga of Erik the Red quotations are from the 1880 translation by J. Sephton from the original Icelandic ’Eiríks saga rauða’.https://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en . It was published as “First Contact: Interglacial Sagas” on Joe Harrington’s blog Writing Out of Time: Creative Writing & Climate Chaos (Dec. 16, 2019).

*Excerpts from “Hands”: The history of Sequoyah / So-whi-li being punished for creating a written form of Cherokee / Tsalagi first came to me in an oral story by an elder., I have read of this mutilation in Traveller Bird’s Tell Them They Lie: The Sequoyah Myth (Los Angeles: Westernlore Publishers, 1971, p. 11) and further discussion in “America’s Histories Revisited: The Case of ‘Tell Them They Lie,’” by Susan Kalter, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 3 (Summer 2001): pp. 329-351. A previous written form had been misused by a group of Cherokees, which made this new form a possible danger.

*Gnadenhutten is one of many massacres of Delaware peoples during their four-hundred-plus years of contact with Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, French, British, and U.S. settlers. My fifth-great grandfather John Cornelius Miller and his wife Hannah (Nancy) Ross’s relatives had ties to the Washington County, Pennsylvania militia who enacted the outrage at Gnadenhutten against pacifist, Christianized Delawares, some of whom may have been my relatives. Two years later, Delawares killed John C. Miller, whom they called “Big Miller.”  

*”Variations on Keening”: The quotation from William Stafford is from “Listening,” The What It Is: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf, 1998), 63.

*Excerpts from “Portal” respond to Louise Gluck’s poem “Solstice,” The Seven Ages (ECCO, 2001), p. 10.

*Excerpts from “Bisymmetry” references an idea expressed by Jorge Luis Borges in "On Exactitude in Science," a short story published in A Universal History of Infamy (translated by Norman Thomas de Giovanni), Penguin Books, London, 1975. Wikipedia has a useful discussion of its antecedents in Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concludedand other publication history. 

*****

Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate, has won recognition for her poetry from Red Mountain Press, Kansas Notable Books (3 awards), 6 Pushcart Prize nominations, Best of the Net nomination, Poetry Society of America, and others. She has recent verse in The Sun, New Letters, Chariton Review, Numéro Cinq, Virginia Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, Apogee, and numerous anthologies. Recent books are from the University of Nebraska Press, Red Mountain Press, and  Spartan Press. She is featured on websites of the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud (NEA selection for 2018-19), and Academy of American Poets. Low teaches in Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies. From 2008-2012 She served on the executive board of trustees, including one year as president, for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. www.deniselow.net  

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The Miniature Book Library is grateful for her gift-book!