A MORE ONEROUS CITIZENSHIP

by Julia Guez

I. 

Wednesday

So many Cassandras sing each to each. What we, gathering, cannot yet sense

may as well be Greek. 

For the record, I do not know Greek. 

Let there be a record. 

Let the record show my Greeklessness would matter greatly at several points,

one or two in particular. 

May have been windwarding. The song, I mean. 

All those xylophones.

Windwarding now to know the music was both knowable and known

then, when

I was standing next to you in the last pew (with our coats still on

because it was cold

and we would still have been hurrying to certain offices

after). I will think of you often.

Performing these frail rites to bend the centrifugal back some,

I am afraid

this will be one convalescence after another,

lilacs on every sill

profusely sad knowing they too spread and spread.

Not unlike the bells,

ever-widening rings of all kinds and the terrible swing of the censer, 

sirens on the other side of this psalm

whose linens are loud with cries, and are become our Italies. 

II. 

Thursday

 I was made American. You must consider this

wanting, badly, to be washed

clean in that light. 

Consider also the fever-dream:

in my case, fractals

which may or may not belong

to otters who appear to be holding

hands. I see the pair, so much dun-

colored fur folding in on itself—

I see the dark river. 

Fortunately, there is also

a shower scene. I thank God for this

part of the dream,

the smell of that

soap and all

the seminarians there

with me and my wife. 

In the dim light of this painterly onsen

glistening

bodies, one is pale

but not at all sickly—

pearlescent then—yes and lissome,

lithe.

Breasts not unlike a murmuration of birds.

What they fever after, we fever after

in tight swaths, circling

the warmest water

laving

feet, fascia, calves,

the small of so many backs,

homily of so many hands

lathering once bleeding eidolons—

every single scar

a story whose ending is clearly not one

for here we are

gently washing, washed

III. 

Friday

How to mourn

how many the

stations of the

breath have taken. 

After the first

death, there is

no other, but

the requiem is

endless, endless the

sequelae whose ever-

widening rings widen

around the names

of the dead

swallowing those who

survive them. Exactly

why we survive

and can look

back with furrowed

brow is beyond

me. It is

not something to

know. On this

day ministers enter

in silence—no

one there—the

force of that

and also the

very fact that

they go on

with this ritual

calling for some

relief from beyond

the desolating sound

of songbirds going

on and on

in the cemetery

the same way

they do here. 

IV. 

Saturday

Between that disgust and this

one, a vigil;

the dark has never been final.

V.

Sunday  

Apparently Arab scholars, when

speaking of the text,

use this admirable expression:

the certain body. 

What body? 

We have several of them.

This one is not sleeping. 

Night is a time of quiet then:

a time to sort, to make bargains,

promises and plans

even if they’re all provisional.

Night is a time to weep

without the children there to see

and when the weeping is over,

night is a time to read and write. 

If we write, we are in debt. 

If we write, we owe. 

This debt transverses all writing;

it shapes it. It gives it life.

This debt is connected to bodies

at work: gendered bodies, material

bodies, bodies in conflict. 

We have several of them

the city is not sure what to do with.

Poor coroners, the poor

morgue, so many unmourned

they pile up

in trucks by the road

to the contagious hospital. 

The body of anatomists and physiologists,

the one science sees or discusses:

this is the text of grammarians,

critics, commentators.

The cells of this text,

a complex system of letters,

combine

moon blood and wings

with

the motility of horses—

too many to count—

cantering

into this pact forming,

as you well know, a word

built to withstand

many things. 

(All but one, in fact.) 

We also have a body of bliss

consisting solely of erotic

relations, utterly distinct

from the first body:

it is another contour,

another nomination;

thus with the text and the flesh

of a real intertext:

the mouth’s wet

vestibule, warm and red baring

brass and wind,

Glenlivet and cunnilingus

whispering

the same words across time

into the same ear

bringing itself so close

droplets land on the same lobe

before waves of sound

hurry towards the tympanum,

through doors of three

ossicles and at least one

cochlea,

leewarding to find

the soft parts, feeling

inside the word

we have been whispering to each other

for centuries about

sleeplessness, Brahms, starlings,

greed and ghosts

who would have wept to step

barefoot into reality and cried

out to feel it again

the way we do now.

The sun rises

over so much we have been

whispering about for millennia—

war, weather,

medicine and how, finally, to explain

the day. For all we have done

to extinguish this

democracy, here it is:

the brightest eye blinking across the sky,

a kindness the color of orioles,

bread and cellos meant for everyone.

“A More Onerous Citizenship” is from The Certain Body, forthcoming in the fall of 2022

Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in the city of New York. The Certain Body is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. Four Way Books will publish The Certain Body in the fall of 2022. For her poetry, fiction and translations, Guez has been awarded the Discovery/Boston Review Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation as well as a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America New York; she's currently the senior managing director of design and implementation there. She teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. You can find more of her work online at www.juliaguez.net