Incompleteness Theorem
Today for the first time my daughter
utters delicious, you’re welcome, and cloud.
She looks into my eyes and says blue eyes,
and together we attempt permanence
with words. A rose is a rose is a toddler
drunk on language and apple slices
and “lettuce popsicles”—kale branches
ripped off the young shrub. She thinks
I love you means to kiss and swaps out no
for not yet, announcing like Adam
in our garden the names for everything
she sees: kitty and flower and broken and sky.
She is a set that contains herself; she is
an unprovable system. She is the opposite
of speechless, knowing no limits on language:
the words beneath the words of I’m so sorry
or I miss you or the words that aren’t even words.
The mathematician’s tombstone reads
We must know—we will know, but
all we know is we don’t. I remember
when language felt sure (disculpe, tu me manques)
and now I remember the hereafter.
She’s in the sprinkler now, trying to catch
the stream. She’s asking now for her T-Rex—
she knows exactly what she wants.
I would carve out certainty
for her if she hadn’t done it first.
Rabbit Lake Trail
Across the milky wilderness you stuck to my barbwire back.
We map read names like Suicide Peak and Powerline Pass.
Released from his leash, the dog bolted for a covey
of ptarmigan that seemed miles from where I stood.
He ran from me to the birds and back again—
an ecstasy of ptarmigan and mountain and the trail along
the ridge. I thought only of how I might describe
this to you, and later, when I learned the true name—
invisibleness—for a group of ptarmigan, I thought of
what Calvino said about love as a matter of precision,
and then I thought of how I might describe you to myself
in another year. Which details might remain.
When the grazing moose spotted me I broke for the ravine,
scrambled down rocks and looked up to the bull
clopping fast along the valley’s chute and even then
you did not subside. You are an instrument of accuracy,
not precision. How to explain? On the radio today,
a song about running to Alaska to shake a long bad dream.
We tell ourselves: do not romanticize the landscape.
Yet there, in the glacial-carved basin, spruce gave way
to scrub and tundra and the willows began to heal themselves
even before the moose was out of sight.
First of All
I want to give you:
the tiny black spider trembling
on my shoulder
stars you can see
in the daytime
the crow at the very tip
of the tallest white oak
blueberry pie so blue it’s purple
and the cool rich cream
every long night before I met you
every long night when I wanted you
staircase that creaks perfectly
when you come home and meet me
a freedom that glistens brilliant as you
walking up the path from the lake
stones wearing crocheted sweaters
the parts of my history
I haven’t yet found
fire and water
the mundanity of joy
light rain on your face awakening you
veins of leaves translucent in sun
far inland from the ocean
the smell of salt on the breeze
staked dogwood learning to grow
a room of the house entirely for thinking
the planets, freely given in love for eons
garden to feed us and two deer
warm grapes on the vine, perfect orbs
the red fox opening her eyes in the morning.
But I will give you one thing today,
this first of all the days.
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Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University, co-producer of the Sweetbitter podcast, and, since 2017, co-editor of Switchback Books. Her most recent book of poems, Ardor, is forthcoming from Gasher Press. She is also the author of the poetry collections Mega-City Redux, Copper Mother, and Annotated Glass; the non-fiction books GoldenEye and Super Mario Bros. 3; and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.
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