IN ACCELERATED SILENCE IN ACCELERATED SILENCE poems by BROOKE MATSON Jake Adam York Prize Selected by Mark Doty MILKWEED EDITIONS © 2020, Text by Brooke Matson All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415. (800)520-6455 milkweed.org Published 2020 by Milkweed Editions Printed in Canada Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker Cover artwork: Eagle Nebula by Gorän Nilsson via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License 20 21 22 23 24 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and its president, Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka; the Ballard Spahr Foundation; Copper Nickel; the Jerome Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Poetry Series; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit milkweed.org. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Matson, Brooke, author. Title: In accelerated silence : poems / Brooke Matson. Description: First edition. | Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2020. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019022503 (print) | LCCN 2019022504 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571315151 (trade paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781571317353 (ebook) Classification: LCC PS3613.A8386 A6 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613. A8386 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022503 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022504 Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. In Accelerated Silence was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation. for Ryan There will be music despite everything. —JACK GILBERT, “A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE” CONTENTS I Ode to Dark Matter Elegy in the Form of a Pomegranate The Day Before Red Giant Supermassive Star Maybe Neurosurgery Eve Splits the Apple Broaden the Subject II Law of the Conservation of Mass Our Lady of Guadalupe Metaphors of Mass Destruction Psalm of the Israeli Grenade Newton’s Apple Prism Elegy in the Form of an Octopus III Eve’s Apple Law of Inertia Impossible Things Electron Cloud Centrifugal Force Orionid Meteor Elegy in the Form of Endangered Species There Is a Room in the Four Dimensions of the Space-Time Continuum IV Elegy in the Form of Porcelain Sonnet in the Higgs Field Ode to a Fractured Conch Elegy in the Form of Steam Metamorphosis V How to Eat a Pomegranate Elegy in the Form of a Butterfly Bush Lithium Sonnet on a Hook Ode to a Rotting Apple Amaryllis Alchemy Ode to the Returned Ode to the Sun Notes Acknowledgments IN ACCELERATED SILENCE I ODE TO DARK MATTER I speed through the moonless night—porch lights thinning into silhouettes of trees. Emptiness isn’t empty, the radio scientist insists. Relieved you’re here to hold the aching stars apart, a muted backdrop to the howl of headlights streaking by, I bend the pedal to the floor. His voice describes a mine deep under the earth where professors hunt the flutter of your wings in accelerated silence— wait for you to slip, to exhale into their sensitive machine, eager to assemble your breath in data streams. They think you’re already theirs: a variable to ensnare in a net sum, the way children trust answers to soothe. Dear wild unknown: tow the borders of this universe far beyond our grasp. Whatever we see, we break— count and dismember all we touch: The earth. The atom. Anatomy. Eve. Be the animal that escapes our love without a wound. ELEGY IN THE FORM OF A POMEGRANATE Eve was like that: eating a pomegranate like smashing a chest of rubies. She split the whole vermilion world in a violent need to know. My finger circles the crown, traces its tight circumference, red and round. I pluck it from the mound the grocer arranged and hear the question I asked you that night, when we were just beginning to trust each other: If I were a fruit, what would I be? The Latin for fruit is pōmum and some reading that Bible believed Eve ate an apple. I hold your answer in my hand: You are striking. Tough to crack. Worth every effort, you said. There’s an art to eating a pomegranate. Cut away the crown until you see the chambers inside—six bedrooms shining with scarlet chandeliers. In a bowl of water use your thumbs to tear the walls apart. I wonder if you ever ate a pomegranate this way when alive, and if you wanted— the way Eve wanted—to be understood, to understand, to be freed from your flesh like a hundred supple seeds. But this is a supermarket, not a bedroom, and my cart is empty and I am wavering on the scuffed linoleum of the produce aisle, rubbing the skin of a pomegranate as if it were your hand. THE DAY BEFORE the doctor called we whispered over a white-clothed table in my favorite restaurant, sipping ruby bulbs of Malbec. You weren’t hungry (a symptom, we later learned) but insisted I order the portobello. Like magnets, our knees locked beneath the table, a phenomenon you loved to point out. Waiters hummed around candles like sable bees and evening honeyed the sills. We’re gonna do everything right, you said, setting down your glass and grinning— meaning July, Seattle, meaning two children and long retirement. I couldn’t help it. I reached across the tablecloth to touch the lines at the corner of your eye. It took you by surprise, my thumb brushing your skin as if painting the edge of you. RED GIANT Light ground to silver powder, suspended in a syringe the nurse slid into your vein. I tasted metal you mused after, as if it were an experiment not a hunt for cells intent on your death, not an ore that could solder your body to life. We didn’t know technetium has a half-life of four million years. It burns in the bellies of red giants—stars smoldering at the end of their lives—a highlight before the collapse into gravity. I feel sick you said. We agreed it must be that terrible metal. I’ll sleep it off you said. We didn’t know the isotope that laced your veins was stripped from fuel rods, old nuclear reactors— a chemical back-burn to fight the fire igniting your scan, igniting your left brain like the night sky. It must still be there in the soil: rust from the ribs of the stars dividing in the rind of your skull, scissoring one life into many. SUPERMASSIVE STAR Let there be— you said, and assembled me from fusion / fire / a timer set in
