Poetry & Art
Lucid Animal.png

Lucid Animal

Lucid Animal.png

Cover art: “The New Icarus”

Artist: Fay Ku

Click here to visit Fay Ku's website


Foreword

Think Anne Sexton’s, “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph”—Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on, / testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade . . . Think Joy Harjo’s, “She Had Some Horses”—She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making. Think rhythms of stuttering hearts and imagery sprung from a state you’ve only dreamed of visiting. 

What intrigues me about a micro chapbook is brevity—when the same degree of efficiency and stunning implication can be achieved as by Atwood’s “[you fit into me]”. Meghan Maguire Dahn achieves just that here in Lucid Animal, the impactful brevity of an iridescent short poem, with lines like “ask me / into the bathroom. I will breathe onto the mirror / until we are both gone.” 

She breathes emotional life into everything considered here, giving every moment and animal its own lucidity. “We both know I’m game for any sharp thing / when you lift me up,” Dahn writes. Like the New Icarus that adorns its cover, Lucid Animal, smartly eschews flying too close to the sun and instead assumes the beauty of trying in the midst of trial, of bathing in the light that promises to outshine it.

Gregory stapp

November 2021


lucid animal

for Lucie Brock-Broido


 

Table of Contents


Never Do Housework with Imperfect Intent

The Conditions of Deprivation

(Mysterious and Subtle Mirror!)

The Other Trodden in Clover and Timothy

Tongue of the Doctor, Tongue of the Dog

Traveling Altar Bearing the Eight Auspicious Gestures

Viscosity

A Barter

Catechism

Shrike

 


 
 
 

never do housework with imperfect intent

When I was a housewife 

I was the finest egret. 

I would wait all day

for any train—yours 

or any of a hundred commuter’s

as they flit their course on Narragansett.

I’d wade the anticonvulsant radius,

free of rope and sympathy.

We made a runt. Our glass half

empty. On the heirloom Blue Willow

I painted a beast. Each on each.

The withering work. My form 

had been perfect. Now I cover

the mirrors. To approach god

build a charge with every coiling, 

every uncoiling atom. Left left left.

Heart heart heart. I will chew

this secret when it grows full.

I will fold small clothes with my beak.


 
 
 
 

THE CONDITIONS OF DEPRIVATION

I am on edge—my vision improves with the heat.

When I faint my neck is livid.

Father and I paint the oak stump thick with tar.

//

The light that insists on my skin

is stubborn in the tar pits—the gasoline

creeks along the fault line.

//

I failed to excavate the excellent mammoth.

I hear the flies anoint the pit. Graceful, 

for once, I entice one to my eyelid.


 
 
 
 

(MYSTERIOUS AND SUBTLE MIRROR!)

I keep this cloud in my mouth

and only let it out 

on occasions of true contrition.

If you rub two things together long enough

they will both bruise. That is how you know 

contrition and time and my cloud.

Darling, on this planet of distance

there is little I regret, but I promise you—

I am still waiting for the bruise:

I am still approaching my own cloud

knowing how quickly it can disperse.

I promise you one day the cloud will cover us 

and everything we forgot will walk

shoulder to shoulder with us

until we recover all that completeness.

There is a remedy for regret: ask me

into the bathroom. I will breathe onto the mirror

until we are both gone 

and though we know this blindness

can’t last, in that moment we’ll admit grace

through our useless eyes. 

Opacity—O cloud—

what life is there for an abyss in a body?

What loneliness behind my lips.


 
 
 
 

THE OTHER TRODDEN IN CLOVER AND TIMOTHY

after Carolina Ebeid

At the center of my trust, a lamb is leaning

warm with worry. There, too, is its weaning. 

My daughter tells me that when you fall asleep

that’s all your sin falling off. I cannot change

the impulses of others, nor can I change

what solace violence can bring. Every flock

establishes an economy, a geometric field

of survival. I read recently of selfish herd theory

the repeated movement of individuals to the center,

forcing, again and again, their neighbors 

into the peril of the periphery. The quickest, 

the strongest, the most dominant ones 

avoid predation in this way. I am not your best

beast of perpetual motion. Tell me an act

is an act and not something greater, and I bleat

an angry answer, sodden with the belief 

that acts signify. In the teeth of the wolf — look — 

there is the fleece of the lamb the ewe pushed out.


 
 
 
 

TONGUE OF THE DOCTOR, TONGUE OF THE DOG

after Stephen Crane

You followed the satin ribbon, 

the detritus, the jealous feeling in the forest

to the suicide, who, among the drying mulberries,

allowed a pup to lick her wound.

“It is sovereign and clear,” she said, “and here

is my certificate.”  She pulled it

from a knot in her gut. You tried

to write her a letter on the spot.

You tried to look her in the eyes.

There are things you cannot do

in the forest. You said, “Stay.

Please, sit.”  You touched behind her ears.

“It is good. It is good.”


 
 
 
 

TRAVELING ALTAR BEARING

THE EIGHT AUSPICIOUS GESTURES

1. One Hand Receiving, the Other Guarding the Knee

Gravity, always plump under the atmosphere, welcomes a small cup.

My hand is always small. My knee is warm enough.

2. Pinching in a Passive Fashion

as you would a butterfly or heirloom lace

as you would the earlobe of a sleeping child

3. Elegantly Draped Ring Finger on Otherwise Nonchalant Hand

I was the aristocrat’s first daughter:

when I pumped water from the well, I did so with grace.

4. Left Hand Receptive to the Northern Water Snake

Where I am from the best prayer is a flexible spine.

5. Hands Perched as though above Tangerines

The egg timer is a holy thing, 

the bell—a small crisis.

6. Two Clenched Fists 

in the folds of an opera cape

7. Holding an Absent Object in the One Remaining Hand

Empty out your devotion: this is the only reasonable approach

to the path between made and unmade.

8. Hand Cascading, as if to Feed Lion

To eat a small thing is to submit entirely to time.

 
 
 
 

VISCOSITY

Glassy eel of doubt, in the morning

I did too little, unaccustomed to exposure

as a means of preservation. When I took you

in my hands I tore you up and lost my hope.

Eel of doubt at midday, when you made

your way through wet grass I laughed

for you and you wrapped your ventricle vein  

around me. I began to suspect 

my island was a place to build a life

for us, without trains or commerce.

Only barges ever passed by us

bearing winter’s salt in mountains and in heaps.

Silver eel of evening, by the glaucous hour

I had reversed my stance. The water and the sky

took prominence and my footing

was on nothing in between. My patience

had grown bare. When I looked at the houses

across the bank, I saw them swelter in their goodness.

I know how I must look to you.

If you suggest I’ve made the bed wrong

I’ll believe you. I’ll go for a walk,

welcome the affection of the neighbor’s cat.

When I make the map of us, my long doubt,

I will lay you down feldgrau, without water,

use you as my scale. For someone who knows 

what’s right, I have trouble 

acting decently without distance.


 
 
 
 

A BARTER 

The white slug of my first promise 

makes work of the field mice. Silvers them

in the woods; and—well, you can always bury

them with the ferns if you want.

Propagate more ferns.

My first time: I was five, still

young enough my mother came to me

her face not taut, I rocked her,

volunteered I promise I promise my promise.

My reconstitution to the green lion

and my subsequent attempts to eat the sun, a fool’s progress 

across my mother’s body to

the sour milk of time.

The curdling.

Ever since that day

I told them—Slugs, 

adorn me for the ferns.

 
 
 
 

CATECHISM 

Summer of getting trashed in the woods

Summer of viscous approach to any problem

Summer of Luna Moth at my gate

Summer of my own damn money

What did the summer carry in itself?

A ransom of feathers that hold 

the sum of the day’s light toothed

in place and fully contemplated.

Summer of the belief in my general unimpregnability

Summer of perfect values

Summer of attempted rape on the lawn of someone’s out-of-town parents

Summer of being saved (Mount Hope River, brindled light)

What are the means of ingress?

In equal shares: alcohol, bitterness, beauty. 

Put a razor under your tongue and climb the cliff face.

Summer of teaching a boy to take fluids

Summer of Billy running from his ghost, bottle in hand

Summer of running my feet bloody/Summer of eating again

Summer of know your place, bitch

If you were to remove it, what would be the shape of its lack?

The shape of the lack would take one of two forms—

the flame or the rose. But hush

Summer of keep your head down

Summer of honest work

Summer of Ryan falling eight stories onto concrete

Summer he was John Doe

What would your mother say?

My mother would, and did, say I am as a migratory creature

and she is my oyamel fir. My mother, found by magnet and riverbed.

Summer of being told I know a lot about love

Summer of petulant goodbyes

Summer of contraband (Pakistani boot knife, eagle feather, machete in trunk)

Summer of short hems

When summer pinches you by the Achilles and dips you in, 

do you submit?

To do so means you accept the inevitability of your own death.

Summer of AM broadcasts and peepers

Summer of bad advice

Summer of busted knuckles

Summer of cherry red

What is the essence and what does it reveal to you?

When you hike it up, you will see your inner rope,

you will see it all work out.


 
 
 
 

TO SHRIKE

If you ask me to be

I am always hungry for the spindle.

Savage bird, and small,

I am your bread and butter,

your mammal, your anything

with fur. I was self-satisfied.

I was smug in the sweet rot—

even happy, even poor, even 

stubborn in my mornings.

My kind can hollow a whole hill. Gnaw

our teeth right in the jaw.

Your own bones take no practice at all.

If I wanted to be 

symbolic about it, I’d beg 

for the barb of a yew.

We both know I’m game for any sharp thing

when you lift me up.


 
Lucid Animal arrow 2.jpg


 
2B9B2613-4456-4261-B04E-196D00604A7C.JPG

Meghan Maguire Dahn

Meghan Maguire Dahn grew up in the middle of the woods. She is the author of Domain (forthcoming from Burnside Review Press in 2022) and the chapbook Lucid Animal (winner of Harbor Review’s Editor’s Prize, 2021). Her first poem was published in Highlights Magazine and read primarily in waiting rooms by children nervous about getting shots or stitches. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, the Iowa Review, the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Small Orange, Bennington Review, the Boog City Reader, Blunderbuss, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, Phantom Limb, the Beloit PoetryJournal, Gulf Stream, among others. She was selected for the 2017 Best New American Poets anthology by Natalie Diaz and she was a winner of the 2014 Discovery/92nd Street Y Poetry Prize (judges: Eduardo Corral, Rosanna Warren, Susan Mitchell, and John Ashbery). She was also a finalist for the Akron Poetry Prize, the Wisconsin Poetry Series' Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, and the Pamet River Prize. She has an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.


Acknowledgements 

I am deeply indebted to the fine publications that have made space for these poems:

“(Mysterious and Subtle Mirror!)” was published in Denver Quarterly.

A slightly different version of “To Shrike,” and “Never Do Housework With Imperfect Intent” were published in Poetry Northwest. “Never Do Housework With Imperfect Intent” was also selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in the 2017 Best New American Poets anthology.

“Traveling Altar Bearing the Eight Auspicious Gestures” was published in the Boston Review.

“Viscosity” was published in Blunderbuss Magazine.

“The Other Trodden in Clover and Timothy” was published in Horsethief.

Support from the Boston Review/92 and Street Y Discovery Prize and the Catwalk Institute was instrumental to the completion of this work.



Lucid Animal

Copyright © 2021 Meghan Maguire Dahn

Cover art: “The New Icarus” by Fay Ku.

Cover design by Taylor Blevins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or republished without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Harbor Review

Joplin, MO 64870

harborreviewmagazine@gmail.com

www.harbor-review.com