Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 31.2
A Violet in the CrucibleShelley wants you to visit Congress when he writes
a violet in the crucible & when he notes
that you may intuit environments
imagination is enlarged by a sympathy,
as endangered creatures do when 7 million pounds
of nitrogen flow into the Chesapeake.
As you push open the cherry wood door
& the intern looks up from her
map of wheels beside the philodendron with streaked
anemic arrows & a jar
of pens from pharmaceutical firms,
Shelley knows you are endangered
is endangered, feeding
as the eyeless shrimp Stygobromus hayi living
among rocks upstream in Virginia feeding on dying
leaves is, or the Congressman you came to visit
in the Rayburn cafeteria with the lobbyist from Bechtel, having left his
aide endangered in a faux-maple carrel
to work on the war funding bill
where seedlings of the law have finished spouting.
You look at things to make them speak.
You have threadlike legs found only in your species.
The cogs are selling credits to the dams
for phosphorous to go into the sea.
When Shelley says (the poet is the legislator) he means as
etheostoma percnurum, the duskytail
darter from Tennessee, legislates or the Indiana bat,
myotis sodalist, the dwarf wedgemussel
half buried in Maryland with your bivalve
in silt of your wetland habitat or you, the vanishing
northeastern bulrush Scirpus anchitrochaetus from Massachusetts
legislates by shrinking, he doesn't mean you will live,
he means you could live on listen. As the sturgeon Acipenser brevirostrum
in a million pounds of phosphorous or the snowy
plover from Cascadia might.
The aide is living on listen too,
he takes your words, there's a little you
in his left eye which tries to focus on your nervous
speech, a stubby tassle
swinging on his shoe; he's got a friend in the Marines
who likes it over there instead of working
in the tire shop after high school. The punctuation
falling from your eyes its eyes their eyes his eyes
is merging with uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... as he explains
the Pentagon budget uh... uh... uh... uh... his sentences forming
a five-star alkaline: We cannot leave them
there without weapons uh-uh-uh-uhuhuh.
He cannot see the stars camped in your heart,
the bunchy bunched-up stars, though he also
has stars in his heart & his friend the Marine has stars.
When Shelley notes (the poet is meant to cheer) he means
your name is on the list right here, he means
if you don't survive this way there are others,
he means send the report with your body- -
