The Green Condition by Elizabeth J. Colen
Ricochet Editions, December 2013
Amazon / Ricochet Editions
Can we mourn together if I don’t know you? I think so.
Sometimes I knock to come in.
Even in our homes we feel criminal. Hidden. The last moments can go on for years. Watch the end: a non-chronological timeline. What could make more sense.
Sometimes our mothers want us dead. Sometimes our lovers are absent.
Animals: silent companions. Whether welcome or not, their existence keeps our timeline in the present. A dog to bury the bones. A raccoon to rip up the garbage. Quiet: the house mocks what is undone, undoing. Waits.
In the green condition there must be adequate strength for handling.
In this condition we move for the one(s) we love. Alone, you eat take-out standing in the kitchen. You watch for the raccoon. Why is everything so contingent on time? I am reminded. I am eating with you.
Certain books should be read in one sitting.
Artifact:
An object made by a human being,
typically an item of cultural or historical interest.
Artifact:
We lived here. We lived
together.
The girl has certain charms. A book collection I can stare into when I’ve got nothing to say. // A mouth I’d like to live in.
In Colen’s baring she questions the nature of love relationships. Parent/Child. Lover/Lover. Pet/Owner. In some ways we are always not in control. In some ways we are owned.
Post Partum/Abandonment/The animal in the tree.
They will only come for what is dead already.
When Khali, a sloth bear at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., went into labor in late December last year, her keepers were thrilled.
Khali—still in labor with other cubs—bent down, not to lick her newborn, but to eat it. The cheers turned to gasps of dismay. Khali gave birth to two more cubs that day, and for the next week, she was as attentive, calm, and nurturing as a mother sloth bear could be. The keepers continued to monitor her and her cubs, as they do with all bear mothers. So they were on hand when Khali ate another of her babies and turned her back on the third. (National Geographic)
The neighbor, a new mother. We watch her disintegrate. On the other side of the door we whisper sorry into the air.
That night the lady with the baby stands in her backyard and yells. I don’t know what she’s angry with.
stability failure, through-truss, offgrassing, arathkone, ahrah-koon-em.
I turn these words over in my mouth.
This book slow builds. The more I read the more it takes over. You know books that changes your interaction with the day. This is one of them.
When she leaves I put her toothbrush in my mouth. I hold it there two hours.
In endings what do we hold onto? Drain the spit from the bristles. Another way to keep you inside me.
Geography of separation. What keeps us separate from each other/ourselves. How do we ever end a thing when we are so entirely alive.
We become destructive.
Two women: The mother. The lover.
Seen in smoke. Seen in leaving. The silence.
They are never named.
The women: We want them close.
We fear them. We cannot exist
without them.
Threat: Mother, Lover, Animal.
This book is a watching, a witnessing. I won’t say destruction again. Maybe: quiet massacre. ‘Most relationships end’ is something my sister said once. We are reminded. It is essential to feel understood. As human beings we crave this, we need it more than we can admit. Watch us form small communities. Watch as we survive.
Poetry is a sharing, an inclusiveness. At least here it is. Colen reminds us how our experiences ruin and wreck us, but then bring us closer to each other. Somehow we keep going. Leaning against the glass window of a very tall building. The mother answers Then she falls.
We don’t know where the heart is.
Colen shows our desire for contact. It is built-in. We write personal ads, online profiles. At times our love exists through screens.
She creates a space for me/the reader to fall in. Or is it a space for her work to burrow. The raccoon dismantles. I walk around my small (tiny) apartment and feel quiet, emotional. The silence fills my blood. I clean the kitchen. Is everyone always battling ants?
It makes sense I would bleed.
And still the anger is constant. Confession is important.
Every night she texts the same message goodnight.
What makes us believe love wholes us/heals us. From what do we need healing.
(Our mothers. Our lovers.)
Across the alley, I watch the neighbor learn about surrender.
Ask why we keep looking/loving. I guess it’s simple. We have no choice.
