Rubbed

By Paisley Rekdal Paisley Rekdal

It’s a simple resistance

between the pull of springs

and struggle of joints: two coiled

silver muscles working

in the lamp against blue washers

and pivot plates, locking nut

coolly swiveling loose with age.

In the arm

it’s done with blood:

tissues plumped then promptly deflated.

What else am I supposed to start with?

Not the light bulb, to which

this whole narrative yearns, loving

the glass envelope sizzling with light,

grasshopper antennae scrubbed

with electricity until each filament’s turned to fire.

No, I have to start with the arm first, the mint-blue

lamp, then maybe light itself to specify

what startles me

about you, globe of hot fruit, Christ heart

throbbing in the open chest; curtains of robe parted

just enough to see what afterglow defines us, waits for us,

rubbing its slow music out into the wet dark—

Tonight, I’m counting out my seeds of waiting for you

through a current that is silent

and might always be,

though it thrums in every gesture:

like this white eye burning within the metal shade

I carefully adjust

over a plate of orange slices each evening.

Source: The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)

Biography

Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections A Crash of Rhinos (2000), Six Girls Without Pants (2002), and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (2007) as well . . .

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