Jane. Maggie Nelson

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       SLIPPAGE

      One day rummaging through

      the “utility room,” I find

      a few loose pages of a journal

      I assume is my own: pages

      and pages of self-doubt;

      a relentlessly plaintive tone;

      and a wanting, a raw wanting

      not yet hidden in my

      poems. But I don’t have

      a beautiful, hard-leaning

      script, nor was I alive

      in 1966. The journal is

      Jane’s, from when she was

      twenty years old. After

      making sure no one’s at home,

      I sneak into my mother’s office

      and Xerox all of it, then carefully place

      the original back where it belongs.

       (1966)

      You know, for a world that demands direction, I certainly have none.

      Will I be a teacher? Will I go to France?

      Really I don’t know how smart I am—

      and that above all else keeps me working and working hard.

      I’m not sure I’ve a good mind.

      I’m not sure I reason well.

      I know I can be as confused as anybody else.

      I don’t know how I’ll do in advanced courses—

      I don’t know how I’ll do on the next econ hourly.

      I don’t know if I could be a great debater.

      And there are a million other things I don’t know about my intellectual capacities.

      Let’s leave emotional ones alone tonite—they’re in worse shape.

      I want so much—to be versatile, charming, warm, deep, intelligent, accomplishing something, loving,

      fooling around, giving instead of getting, cheery not driven, sure not uncertain, possessing not anticipating,

      answers not questions.

       I’m seething lately

      —but it too shall pass.

       FIRST PHOTOS

      The only photo of Jane

      I saw while growing up

      hung in my parents’

      bedroom. She was wearing

      a long raincoat and

      standing on a stair,

      against a tacky interior

      of bronze chevrons.

      Later I will find out

      that Jane was wearing

      a long raincoat the night

      she was killed. What if

      it were the same coat

      as in the picture, the one

      I looked at all those years?

      I arrive at the New York Public Library

      with my two dates, the bare brackets

      of a life. I ask a librarian

      where I might find information

      about an old murder. Was it

      a famous murder? she queries.

      Not really, I say. It was in the family.

      My answer embarrasses me.

      She gives me little slips of paper

      which I fill out and roll up

      then shove into silver tubes

      as long as pinkies. After

      dropping them down a hatch

      I wait for the invisible staff

      to send up dark blue spools

      of the Detroit News from below.

      Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the spools

      rocket across the lighted screen.

       Ike Fights Heart Setback. Blacks

       End Long Strike at College. Old Foes

       Truman and Nixon Hold

       a Sentimental Visit. “We’ll Be

      on the Moon by July!” Then

      on March 22, 1969, Jane’s face

      suddenly fills the screen.

      Her youth an aura like a

      new haircut—just blatant,

      raw, crushing. A headband

      keeps her brown hair back;

      her lips are parted slightly.

      How she wants. How she

      penetrates, her eyes set back

      in her brow like my mother’s,

      like their father’s: dark,

      obedient, devouring.

      My face stares into hers,

      our thoughts frozen together

      on the cusp of a wave

      just starting to go white-cold, curl

      and fall back into the spitting green.

      When I started looking at СКАЧАТЬ