#natalie eilbert

[geryone]

Swan Feast, Natalie Eilbert

[whisperthatruns]

Poetry, May 2019

[sashayed]

Bacterium

In the last segment, I tried sufficiency. They moved my femur and a single woman braiding her hair fell

from me. I tried to warn you, this desert editorializes. A scorpion lifts its tail, braids more active than braiding,

it hisses. I, of all people, get it. In the mornings we wake to the kind of life we want until we turn our heads east.

The night fills without us but I warned you, I was full already. A banana inside me blasted open a door,

my thoughts at the threshold of such a door blank. Love transacts, a figure in the distance crowded with window.

An enzyme eats plastic, but which kind? Synthetic polymer or the ways you tried to keep me? This is the last segment.

My mother

draws a circle around time and this is an intercourse. My mentor draws a circle around time and this is an intercourse. I shake

out of bed. Humans continue the first line of their suicide letter. An enzyme invents us, we invent enzymes. The plastic we make,

we must eat it. Draw a circle around time. We designed us in simple utterances. The political term graft means political

corruption. The grifter never had an I. In the burn unit, they place tilapia skins over human scar tissue, the killed form on top

of afflicted form, also a graft. Also a graft of afflicted form, the killed form on top, they place tilapia skins over human scar

tissue. In the burn unit, I never had a grifter, corruption means political, graft the political term. In simple utterances

we designed us. Time draws a circle, we must eat it. We make the plastic, enzymes invent we, us invents an enzyme to continue

the first line of a suicide letter. Out of bed I shake with intercourse. Time draws a circle around my mentor. Time draws a circle around

my mother.

This is the last segment. The ways you tried to keep me? Synthetic polymer, but which kind? An enzyme eats plastic, crowded window,

a figure in the distance transacts love. At the threshold of such a blank door, my thoughts open a door. A banana blasted inside me.

Already I was full but I warned you, the night fills without us. We turn our heads until we want the kind of life in the mornings

we wake to. I get, of all people, it. It hisses. A scorpion, more active than braiding, braids its tail, lifts the editorialized desert. You tried

to warn me from me. Her hair fell braiding a single woman. My femur was moved. They tried sufficiency in the last segment.

Natalie Eilbert (b. 1986) Poetry, May 2019

[cor-ardens-archive]

         To be looked at by another animal, to be looked at by another animal, the country beautiful           and I so ugly inside it, such a huddled blemish in its peaks.

Natalie Eilbert, Stardune

Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urberville

... struck off from humanity; bearing no affinity to man or woman; a wretch on whom Nature had set her ban.

Mary Shelley, Mathilda

[intimatum]

Natalie Eilbert, The Lake

[lifeinpoetry]

What was the point of not          having a belief?

To lean left towards          no deity with a mouth full

of starch as god places my palm           over a river. And since

god is the four-letter word          I can’t pronounce,

I press my thumbprint over          the home button to view

an image of rivers.  

— Natalie Eilbert, from “Three of Swords,” published in BOAAT

[bostonpoetryslam]

I don't write because there's a problem that needs to be solved. I write because I can't even tell you the problem.

Natalie Eilbert, “Man Hole,” from Indictus

[madame-verte]

 THE COLLECTION - Various Storms & Saints, part One:

“I am sitting on my bed. A storm is coming, appropriately. A storm is always appropriate.”

— Franz Kafka, from a diary entry written c. December 1919, in: Diaries, 1910-1923.

“Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in. I want an excuse to change my life.”

— Franny Choi,from: Catastrophe is Next to Godliness, published in The Atlantic.

“Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full-blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it’s really God - playing music in his favorite cathedral in heaven – shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys – perfect harmony – perfect joy.”

— Joan Baez.

“He, in his madness, prays for storms, and dreams that storms will give him peace.”

— Leo Tolstoy, from: The Death of Ivan Ilych.

“She’d always adored autumn storms, from the quiet that came before the rain, when the birds and bugs went silent, to the cracks and grumbles that echoed between the clouds, rife with the possibility of goblins and ghosts.”

— Ami McKay, from: The Witches of New York.

“ I am thinking of the storm ahead, / peach bright, so goddamn beautiful I forget / there is a better idea in the future, the future / that promises only that it will never arrive— / It’s what we want, isn’t it, a rupture ahead / that has no name for what it will do —”

— Natalie Eilbert, from: The Lake.