THE JITTERS by ANNE CECELIA HOLMES
LEARN HOW TO SHAKE
book info: 88 pgs / horseless press / $15 / june 2015
When a mirror is held up to a mirror, certain things dissolve: the room, the hands, the then, then, then.
Anne Cecelia Holmes new book, The Jitters, is neither mirror, nor hands. These poems are dissolve. These poems are: I know more about my skeleton than I do about the things it protects. Is this cause for concern, or relief?
“To climb trees without touching them:
an ill-fated task. Real triangulation
takes some practice. Our hearts
need better structure. A different forum
for circling around.”
There are trees with hearts carved into them. Initials in those hearts. Maybe you have a way of knowing if the people those initials belong to are dead, or something else. Maybe not. Trees can disappear, too. A house, or a fire. This is how we love.
Speak into a fan. Hear how your voice gets chopped up. Record this. Play it for someone you know. They will say you sound different. & if you don’t ask them to elaborate, you will never hear them say you sound happier. But you will also never hear them say, you sound so far away.
“What I can do to be good.
What it means to be
a people person who
imagines so many deaths.”
I think about my blood. I worry about it. I imagine tiny, tinier people swimming through it. They know I’m going to die one day. But they are just swimming. They splash each other & laugh & this isn’t macabre because water doesn’t exist to them. Even though the body is made of it. Even my body.
“If you are sitting in an exit row please
stop screaming. If you can’t be still
in a pole barn I have a plan.
I am never scientific but again
I am the one exploding all over,
testing how nothing really happen.”
Have you ever seen an old building demolished? How everyone shows up, the eagerness glowing in their faces, waiting to see a once done thing, undo. Now the difference between watching this happen & watching a video of this happen isn’t that you could pause it at any time, even stop it from happening at all. There is a difference, but it isn’t that.
So we end up gazing at the ceiling. The bumps look like caves. We have never been in a cave. But if we ever did enter one, we would say a name out loud. Maybe it would be a name passed down through our family for generations, a name that we are terrified will one day die out. It is almost useless to find meaning in an echo. Almost.
“Ode to
absolving myself of everything.”
The Jitters is a book that, understandably, shakes. To read these poems is to engage in replacing the windows before the earthquake. Anne Cecelia Holmes has written a collection that, when the mirrors are finally separated, reveal a jagged light. When that light washes over you, you finally feel at home in your distortion. & you are.
buy THE JITTERS here
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review by: dalton day
