New York poet Amy Leigh Wicks was on a road trip when she met a man in Wyoming and fell in love. The two eloped after she completed her MFA at The New School University, and rode motorcycles to California. They sold their bikes for plane tickets to Wellington, New Zealand, and began to build a life together, eventually moving to Kaikoura. After the 7.8 earthquake in 2016 caused unprecedented damage along the east coast of the South Island, Amy Leigh joined the recovery and rebuild project as a communications advisor, while completing her PhD at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. She is the author of Orange Juice and Rooftops and her poems have appeared on The Best American Poetry blog, in Sport, Ora Nui, and Ika Journal.

The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage None Edition

By Amy Leigh Wicks

Auckland University Press

Copyright © 2019 Amy Leigh Wicks
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86940-897-8

Contents

Creation Story,
Tend,
Psalm I,
Salt and Light,
Log No. 1,
Loretta,
Descent,
Remnant,
Bildungsroman,
Rapha,
Redolent,
Epiphany,
Canticle I,
Unmaking,
The History of New York,
Paysage Moralisé,
Landing,
Mihimihi,
First Night in Aotearoa,
Psalm II,
Sabbath,
Quotidian,
Rerenga,
Sehnsucht,
Tuesday,
Rhetorical,
when I halve them,
Water Song,
Impasse,
International Orientation,
Maundy,
Plimmerton,
expatriate,
Learning to Swim,
Where Stars Go,
X,
Kapiti Proverb,
Canticle II,
Log No. 2,
August,
Lament,
Breakfast Club,
Nga Raukore,
Psalm III,
Log No. 3,
Crux,
Literature,
Log No. 4,
Psalm IV,
Canticle III,
Last Picnic in Tawa,
Psalm CXXXIX: In Translation,
Canticle IV,
Premonition,
Apokálypsis,
Home,
Assay,
Märchen,
Rumuri,
Cedar,
Ritual,
Everything Ruined,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,

CHAPTER 1

CREATION STORY

I was alone in the womb
breathing the water of God
through my little gills.

I came shivering — gasping
to the light — my mother
‘s face a smear of pink.
To be held against a wall
with her heart on the other side —
this was my first sadness.

I loved the taste
of all my Play-Doh — red
was my favourite. Father

fed me pink grapefruit hearts
on a tiny silver spoon — I tore
each chamber apart with my teeth.

TEND

Get the ones that grow up between the cracks
my mother says, leaning over the lemon balm.

She is a sweating, garden-gloved goddess with strong arms
and I am pulling puny weeds from patio squares

thinking about cloud shapes, and the way that boy
touched my back when he walked past me yesterday.

There are peppers, tomatoes, eggplants heavy on the vine
but I don’t see them. I see dandelions and cement

and I have barely finished two squares when Mom sends me
to make sandwiches. Things are growing but I don’t see them

until fifteen years later in Island Bay. It took the furthest place
from home for me to put on muck boots and feed somebody else’s

chickens in earnest. Now I place the tentacled roots of coriander and spring
onions in a jar like they are holy, with a little water, facing the sun.

PSALM I

You know my father’s name
is John — impossible. Look at
your little sea with whales
smaller than ice cubes!

The sun was cold
before you touched it,
and now it rages love.

Why make almost
gods of girls like me
who hook the fish
and stomp the grass
and eat popcorn
with glistening fingers
in the centre row of the theatre?

SALT AND LIGHT

The first time he stopped by
the house we were tall
as his belt buckle.

I ride toward the Brooklyn Bridge
from Harlem before sunrise.

I want to be clean
so I need to be cold.
When my lungs scream
and sweat stings my eyes,
it is almost over.

There was no coast to run to
so how could we wash?

Cold black morning
then grey
until the sun blisters
the silver buildings

and I am cold, surrounded by water
and metal.

His stomach is a barrel.
We are too small to see his face.
His breathing is rats
chasing a can in an alley.

Every one that falls (an apple
in his yard) is devoured.

I want to be clean
so I need to be cold.
When my lungs scream
and sweat stings my eyes,
it is almost over.

I am clean and full of salt now.
I am an ocean.

LOG NO. 1

There is no blanket of fog. I am not running through the woods today. Last night I was swimming and could hear bullets in the water around me. They sound like zhzh, a pleasant sound. The night before I could feel a man behind me before I saw the shadow of his hat. He grabbed my arm and I ran and threw myself down in some shrubs. I could hear a truck or a van racing toward me. I woke up safe, but barely. I used to have to watch people die in my dreams. I could hear, smell, feel their blood warm on my shoulders. Bev from high school said that was nothing. Her sister used to attend her own funeral in her dreams, night after night for a whole year. That was after her parents divorced and her stepdad moved in. He was a taxidermist. She showed me the basement of hooks and stretched skins of deer and coyote. We weren’t supposed to be down there, drinking her mom’s Kahlúa in our milk.

LORETTA

Who doesn’t hope
for a fishing net
to come heavy
from the water with
an old locked box
caught in the net?

You might ask
how did the box
swim into the net?
And I might say

that is between
the box and the net.

Some other secrets
come up from the deep.

I have had to open
the door — to let out dust
of another century.
It floated toward
our boat in a sealed urn,
and when I brought it inside
opened it like a genie’s bottle.

I mean, Great Grandma danced
for money and the music
still plays after dusk.

I am the woman who dances
for free. Lets the piano rattle
even after the sun
shines through all the windows.

And when I open the door
again it’s for air, into another
country. I can feel her smile

where trees are pink
and the lavender sky smells
of salt and sea and the box
on my stoop is still dripping.

DESCENT

Inside the house where I grew up, black mould
spotted the walls. It was years before we knew
it was inside us like lichen on rocks.

On a starry night, do I choose the fruit that’s ripe
or wait alone, for one other human, burning
like a roman candle in the dark? There he is,

hands on the other side of the glass, waiting.
There is the question of table or bar, forever
or an hour of open doors all leading to the same room.

If I was a real woman walking toward him across the floor —
but the oysters are cold, dead in their shells, us not speaking.
Here I am, floating above the earth as it yawns, limp roots crinkling the air —

Mother’s friend Jill is packing my doll house
telling Mom what an asshole Dad is (they have never met)
asking, aren’t I happy she’s free? There I am without a mouth screaming
or in bed beside a stranger, waiting for another storm to break.
Great Grandma’s china teacups, one fight at a time,
were dropped onto kitchen tiles.

Now the gallery is well lit, my collarbone on display —
I can see the shine of something, waiting in the dark
and I can’t say if I will run toward it or away.

REMNANT

Once I said, I want
to be a lawyer, a doctor,
and a ballerina —

I woke twenty years later
writing these poems.

BILDUNGSROMAN

I chose the blue marble with cream in the centre.
I ate the birthday cake but I did not like it.

The cave was not just dark, it was wet
and I slid through tight passes like a snake.

What light flickers through my dreams
to lead me from one question to another?

I have forgiven the things in you I hated most,
which is to say I have forgiven myself. I know

what it cost to buy that string of pearls. It was full
of hope and mistaken. It took me a long time

but I’ve found what I am looking for and it is not
marriage starting over. Here we are, standing

on either side of the lawn, iron horseshoes in hand,
tossing toward different stakes, almost reaching.

RAPHA

The heavy knots of rope and clinking chains
on rusted pulleys; the dock at dusk unwrites
my plans and sketches a map of the sea
on the back of my eyes.

There I am, pushing a child in a white pram through
rose gardens. There I am pinching sugar snap peas
from the vine, letting them fall into the basket.

I want to be a sailor — no
I want to be lost in the boat
rescued by a sailor and then
shipwrecked on an island with him.

There is the bunting-dressed hotel lobby
where guests shuffle from mini crab cakes to
éclairs, dull from nice champagne, dabbing eyes
as they dance and grow old and confetti the air
with sadness.

Here I am at the edge of a white page large
as a living room, trying to write with a pen
twice my size. There is a giant hand resting
above my head, waiting for me to let go of the pen.

I want it to go like this — no
I want to be surprised by the ending
but completely in control of how it happens.
The pen flies across the page without me.

What is it about the clairvoyant’s dirty fingers
grabbing my wrist after breakfast
that does not surprise me? We walk
toward each other through golden air
but we bow to different futures.

There I am, curled up like a child crying out
all of my fears. Here I am, wiping my eyes
to read each word as it is written.

REDOLENT

A shock of dust settles like
tiny geese on the cover of my book

and I remember beginning — a dark
home without walls, in water. Then

Mother opens the china cabinet, reaches
for the cup with faded pink roses.

Two sugars, more milk than tea,
my hands are so tiny, her hands are God’s.

Then I am at a payphone when the train stops
near Pisa, fingernails scratching through the soft

of my palms and then the fear is gone and the night
is breathing on me warm, as if I’m in the mouth of a dog.

Then I am home, it was just a tremor and everything
resettles, alive, dead, alive again.

EPIPHANY

I landed drunk in London, fell asleep waiting
for my 11 a.m. train to Newcastle —
God is not above using station attendants
to wake his baby up. I got to her
in a cold rain still clutching my passport,

so happy I cried.
We left for Northumberland before dawn —
extra layers for rain; red lipstick
on my twenty-two-year-old mouth.

I don’t know why she took me
to sit at the edge of the cliff
where water breaks rock into salt.

Down the coast three dogs wrestled
in the white surf and were gone,
and it was just us sitting on our
hands for warmth, and then she was gone and

it was just me, alone with the bruise
of a bad decade, finally asking toward the sky
for a little help, shuddering ugly tears until
I was dry in the silence of an answer I’m still
learning to understand.

CANTICLE I

His warm mouth in the snow
better than the first bottle of pinot noir
I finished on the fire escape after Paris.

His coat smells like diesel and pine and soap.
When he walks in the bar I feel the other girls flame.

Come pick me up.

Take me to your castle
to your tent
to your truck.

I’m light-headed but I won’t forget.
I’m messy, but I’ve been told
my eyes are beautiful,
I’ve got honey under my tongue.
Of course you won’t.

I was supposed to be untangled by now.
Tell me where you’ll be anyway.
You wouldn’t want me
mixing you up with somebody else.

He tells me to wait
and the lights
finally dim before the movie.

One wild mare let loose
and all the chariots forget the war.
It’s a black and white, I don’t know
who’s starring.

Your skin, my God,
your skin, his thumb traces my jaw.

He sits at the old wooden table under a gas lamp,
and blood taps out a rhythm in my throat.

The only way I can think to slow
my breathing is to picture him asleep
in my arms, night after night after night.

UNMAKING

For Félix González-Torres

What began in the womb continues on the porch
twenty-five years later. Did I make myself

the way I am? Staring at the sun until I see
black spots. The line where sky meets sea

could be a seam, hiding a zipper, and then what?
Sure I get down on my knees sometimes.

Everybody’s gotta serve someone, and some
days it’s too hard to stand. Some prayers

sound a little like echoes. Some modern art looks
a little like my heart, a pile of hard candy

disappearing one colored drop at a time. Who said love
was bad? There is still the problem of skin, but

on the other side of sky and sea is a pile —
every sweet little thing that’s been lost.

THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK

The first time I took the train north to see him
it was bitter cold, even the snow was frozen solid.

Does that mean the snow was ice? Does ice sparkle
like shingles on a tarred roof under the moon? I was
cold on the train the whole five hours thinking
about the next fifty years of my life, wondering what I’d make
for the dinner at my neighbour’s next week. Maybe I’d find
mini gherkins, spicy wholegrain mustard, pork, ham,
Swiss, and a loaf of Cuban bread, press it all on the grill
like Myrna used to do for staff meals on holiday shifts instead
of paying us time-and-a-half for waiting tables on Christmas Day.

I spent Christmas at St Vincent’s where I was born, trying to tell
if the doctors were lying about Grandpa to make it hurt less,
or if they knew what was wrong with him at all.
Dr Solomon came still wearing his yarmulke, pulling green
scrubs on over a red holiday sweater and I felt safe
under the fluorescent lights because he was whistling
and had a walk that said I’m the guy that they call
when they don’t know who to call. He told my Catholic family
Larry has gone septic and he’s sorry to say he doesn’t know
if he’ll make it, but he is going in to do surgery now and we
will know soon enough. My parents stayed married
for three months after that conversation, they sat beside
each other watching Home Alone on the screen above
my head. Two hours later, Larry, who hadn’t had a drop
of water in three days, was drinking Fanta from a straw,
asking for a comb to pull through his thick white hair.

Four days later I was cold on that train riding north thinking
about two days earlier when the man I was going to see
came to see me and touched my wrist and bought me
a strawberry milkshake even though it was snowing out,
because we’d already had a coffee — well, I’d had a coffee
and he had a hot chocolate, but it was still early
and we were mostly strangers drawn to a diner in town
with red vinyl booths and a sign in the window that said open.

PAYSAGE MORALISÉ

After W. H. Auden

He grows up in the valley,
visiting his grandfather’s farm, mountains
covered with pines, pines covered with snow. The water
is always cold in the north country. On the south shore of Staten Island
I grow up on fresh mozzarella and Pop-Pop’s tomatoes, visit the city
on the ferry. Gran says the man beside us is drinking sorrow

from his paper bag. At eleven I learn to wind my hips, drink sorrel
with snapper and bammy. At twelve it’s Chivas Regal with Valle
on his stoop. My throat burns and I’m warm. Valle says Hudson is his city.
Across the river, on the ridgeline of the Catskill Mountains
Rip sleeps on his side. He doesn’t wake when I land
in a snow storm at twenty. The river is hunks of frozen water

moving toward Manhattan alongside the train. Water
is everywhere in Venice, holding countless boats just so. Row
after row of cured prosciutto, Chianti, ciabatta, I wander the aisles and
streets. I get lost and it hurts. At twenty-one he leaves the valley
for canyons and rattlesnakes, mountain
passes and rowdy bars. I leave Venice for other old cities,

bruised, eyes down. When I get back to my city
I am silent for a year. I climb down into familiar water
next summer, leaving my tiny mountain
of clothes on barnacled rocks. Can you call washing sorrow
if there are no tears? I am north of Manhattan Valley
by forty blocks, a mermaid, floating between this island

and New Jersey. In my laundromat on 139th, the stainless steel island
piled with bed sheets listens to me finally open up. The city
wanders through me and knows me. He drives south from Casper to Vail
then east. When he finds me, he takes me to the water
and we watch waves break all night. I don’t know his sorrow
or his happiness. I want to touch him. The mountains
out west are pink and gold in the morning. No mountains
are here. Manhattan, Staten, my beautiful dirty islands
are not his. He does not know my sorrow
or my happiness but he knows how to hold me. Jersey City
is lit up across the water
almost beautiful. I might be unravelling.

We are floating on the water
when the sun comes up slowly, heavily —
we are drifting further and further from dry land.

LANDING

I married the man on a motorcycle from out west
and left my city, my state, my country for love.
I did not look back. I thought I might turn to salt.

I gave away all my books and received a jar of coffee.
When it rains the grass does not bruise. What came
of saying yes to love? Loneliness, a shock of cold air —

I changed my name but kept rose my favourite tea.
I watched the ocean grow dirt and grass and trees
and I did not remember my name when we landed.

Memory must be spilled to be full again
and I am as much a tulip as a cup, overflowing even
without my things. One kind word can build a kingdom.

Some say love cannot tell light from dark.
I say it does. It works in sand around a melting clock.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage None Edition by Amy Leigh Wicks. Copyright © 2019 Amy Leigh Wicks. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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