Vessels by Paisley Rekdal

Vessels

Shouldn’t it ache, this slit
into the sweet
and salt mix of waters 

comprising the mussel,
its labial meats
winged open: yellow- 

fleshed, black and gray
around the tough
adductor? It hurts

to imagine it, regardless
of the harvester’s
denials, swiveling 

his knife to make
the incision: one
dull cyst nicked

from the oyster’s
mantle — its thread of red
gland no bigger

than a seed
of trout roe — pressed
inside the tendered

flesh. Both hosts eased
open with a knife
(as if anything

could be said to be eased
with a knife):
so that one pearl

after another can be
harvested, polished,
added to others 

until a single rope is strung
on silk. Linked
by what you think

is pain. Nothing
could be so roughly
handled and yet feel 

so little, your pity
turned into part of this
production: you 

with your small,
four-chambered heart,
shyness, hungers, envy: what

could be so precious
you’d cleave
another to keep it

close? Imagine
the weeks it takes to wind
nacre over the red

seed placed at the other
heart’s mantle.
The mussel 

become what no one
wants to:
vessel, caisson, wounded 

into making us
the thing we want
to call beautiful.

Paisley Rekdal

Intermodulation - Bill Evans-Jim Hall (Full Album) HQ

Bill Evans - You Must Believe In Spring(1977)

Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner

Talent

This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
a man, inching across it in the space
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.
There is no word net.
You want him to fall, don’t you?
I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
The word applause is written all over him.

Carol Ann Duffy

Malcolm McLaren: Fans

Little Essay on Communication by Stephen Dunn

Safe to say that most men who want
      to communicate,
who would use that word, are shameless

and their souls long ago have drifted
      out of their bodies
to faraway, unpolluted air.

Such men no doubt have learned women
      are starved
for communication, that it's the new way

to get new women, and admission of weakness
      works best of all.
Even some smart women are fooled,

though the smartest know that to communicate
      is a form of withholding,
a commercial for intimacy while the heart

hides in its little pocket of words.
      And women
use the word too, everyone uses it

who doesn't have the gift of communication;
      it's like the abused
asking for love, never having known

what it feels like, not trusting it
      if it lacks pain.
But let's say a good man and a good woman,

with no motives other than desire
      for greater closeness,
who've heard communication is the answer,

sign up for a course at the Y,
      seek counseling,
set aside two hours in the week

for significant talk. What hope for them?
      Should we tell them
very little, or none at all?

As little or none as there is for us,
      who've cut
right to the heart, and still conceal,

who've loved many times well into the night
      in good silence
and have awakened, strangely distant,

thinking thoughts no one should ever know?