The Maynard
Spring 2020

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Stem of Old French Creistre, To Grow

To climb out of
        the crease—you see it here?
      Crumbled, folded-in-on-itself
                welter of wrinkles, shadow slices,
           light wells and pin pricks, knife
    edges.
                      I would say fasten
             fingers on ridges; crimp or open grip.
                                        Chalk your digits and scramble
                            up the scarp—
                      look for deep indents
           but shallow will do.
    Just feel the floor, dimples
                           and lips along the way—you see,
               this takes the whole
                                           torso; the pupil
   is only a hole, an entry
                      before we
               recalibrate the upside-downness of it.
      Cy Twombly practices drawing
                  in the dark
                          to make lines less
               purposeful.        I passed a playground in slant,
                    late charcoal-silver light,
                    heard children’s high-pitched cries—
                they took me
                          back through my mind’s eye,
                    somewhere I can’t place—
                 it’s
                                 beyond repatriation.
                                                            Woooooooo-
                                                hooooooo:
                    that’s how
                 Ali Smith falls
                       into the
                                             elevator shaft,
                 counting one elephant
                                     two eleph-ahh.
      I clamber
                  up
                        again,
         clasping refractive calcite crystals
      to steer me past fog and clouds of any tropospheric form
            and at the top I step through old white oak forests
                  rooted with fluted golden chanterelles
     ridged with gills like sea creatures.
                              Paths lead to a city
                                                 paved with anidolic prisms,
                          glowing hexagons
            doubling as glass-coffered ceilings of
      deep-down basements,
               belly and earth chambers—
         throwing sun and moon beams
                 downward and sideways
            where we try
      —but are forbidden—
                       to see.