Weekly Poem: ‘Je m’appelle Ivan’

By Heather Christle

I am alone         I am a real bear        with a head full of
hazard and light           I live in nature            live with no
friends         and no equity         who needs it        I have
my face        I have my hands        which are as I speak
mauling the air            one time I took a trip              I lay
horizontal on a marvelous raft                      I did look up
regard the blank stars      and accept them as holes in
the frame          one time I ran so fast          I left my own
self behind                my own self wandered into an old
birch        and it fell over            I have no escrow          O
bees thou sweet kingdom of noise                  I worship
freely               I pee on the leaves               and the wind
impulses right through me        like a small clean rock
all I want is the fish to glow at night                        when
everyone on earth is trying to reach me                 hello
yes     hello      this never happens       yet other events
go on and on         the dimming of the moon          I am
upright         I am lumbering        alone with no liquidity
and I live on berries          deliver me berries       if later
on you glide          into these wild and wilder woods

Heather Christle is the author of “What Is Amazing” (Wesleyan University Press), “The Difficult Farm” (Octopus Books, 2009) and “The Trees The Trees” (Octopus Books, 2011), which won the 2012 Believer Poetry Award. She has taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and at Emory University, where she was the 2009-2011 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry. She is the web editor for jubilat and frequently a writer in residence at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.