Cleave Read online

  CLEAVE

  Copyright © 2021 Tiana Nobile

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Book design: Kate McMullen

  Cover Painting © Eden Some

  Editor: Leslie Sainz

  Proofreader: Amanda Linnette Rosa, Kendall Owens

  Author Photo: Zoe Cuneo

  Text: Arno Pro 10.5 / 14

  Display: Sommet Slab Regular

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Nobile, Tiana, author.

  Title: Cleave : poems / Tiana Nobile.

  Description: Spartanburg, SC : Hub City Press, 2021.

  Summary: “In her debut collection, Tiana Nobile grapples with the history of transnational adoption, both her own from South Korea and the broader, collective experience. In conversation with psychologist Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments and utilizing fragments of a highly personal cache of documents from her own adoption, these poems explore dislocation, familial relationships, and the science of love and attachment.”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020047490

  ISBN 9781938235757 (paperback)

  ISBN 9781938235764 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

  Classification: LCC PS3614.O23 C58 2021 DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047490

  Hub City Press gratefully acknowledges support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amazon Literary Partnership, South Arts, and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

  HUB CITY PRESS

  200 Ezell Street

  Spartanburg, SC 29306

  1.864.577.9349

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  I.

  Moon Yeong Shin

  /'məTHər/

  What orchard are you from?

  Abstract

  Mother of Letters

  St. Rose of Lima

  The Night I Dreamed of Water

  Where are you really from?

  Abstract

  Mother of Rock

  Did you know

  Abstract

  Mother of Cloth

  Abstract

  Child’s Pre-Flight Report

  II.

  /'mīgrənt/

  The Stolen Generation

  The Last Straw

  Operation Babylift

  Fire and Rice

  III.

  Abstract

  Interview with Dr. Harlow

  Abstract

  Mother of Wood

  Abstract

  To Whom It May Concern:

  /mun/

  The Courier

  Mother of Wire

  ‘Lost’ first languages leave permanent mark on the brain, new study reveals

  Petals

  Father, Harry (Holy Maker)

  Underwater Falsetto

  /'məŋki/

  Personal Fiction

  Harlow’s Monkey

  Revisionist History

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  My mother groand! my father wept.

  Into the dangerous world I leapt:

  Helpless, naked, piping loud;

  Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

  –William Blake, “Infant Sorrow”

  I.

  MOON YEONG SHIN

  Written on the white slip at the bottom

  of a polaroid, cut off by the frame:

  a name. Many years passed before I learned

  surnames come first in Korea. I rode

  my bicycle in circles around this reversal.

  For years, my skin leaped from shadow to shadow.

  I drank the darkness, or the darkness drank me,

  but what’s the difference when your veins are full

  of haunting? One day I will walk

  the narrow streets of many cities full of ice

  freshly frozen. I will hike through forests

  of wind storms newly risen. I will learn

  and forget the names of many trees,

  of tea leaves plucked too early in the season.

  I will orbit the earth like a moon

  searching for its shadow. Where does a moon

  find its planet? Or is it the other way

  around? To be a recently hatched egg-moon,

  curved shell pinned to the sky. I’ve spent my whole

  life in orbit of other people’s light, celestial satellite

  in ceaseless wane. How much can you learn

  from a stranger’s surname? A young animal

  crawls its way out of the womb, stretches its legs,

  and feels cold for the very first time.

  /'MəTHəR/

  We tend to our roles like we tend to a fire,

  poking the coals with the blazing tip of an iron.

  The head of a woman occasionally produces more heads.

  The body of a woman is the source of all our breaths.

  See Also: The naming of riverbanks.

  See Also: Nature’s tendency to cleave.

  There is a difference between the qualities

  we inherit and the qualities of instinct.

  The brain with its many folds looks like it’s squeezing itself.

  Its mouths are puckered and waiting to be unlocked with a kiss.

  An organ of the body is regarded as the source

  of nourishment for the next corresponding organ.

  How we feed on each other for ourselves.

  How we keep ourselves alive through each other.

  You are the living tissue beneath the bark of a cork oak.

  You are a ship grained with the grooves of trees.

  WHAT ORCHARD ARE YOU FROM?

  The juice of the berry, of black, of blue,

  of red. You sweep the sweet dripping

  off your chin with your tongue. In the folds

  of your cheeks, you savor the sap.

  Who is to say they know the power of fruit?

  That which could not be picked?

  They call me peach,

  orange soft and tender peel.

  They bundle my bones in boxes

  and ship them across continents

  to be packaged and sold.

  Who is to say they weren’t made to poison?

  Left out on the counter, my flesh will darken.

  Taste the bitter pulp, the slender tendon

  where the stem snapped.

  What will rot where the skin was bit?

  Take me by the jowl,

  the stony pit

  I keep buried in my mouth.

  Do you still feel where they snipped the stalk?

  Even my most succulent fruit

  will never fully ripen.

  Pruned premature, I ache for root.

  ABSTRACT

  “The surrogate was made from a block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth. A light bulb behind her radiated heat. The result was a mother, soft, warm, and tender, a mother with infinite patience, a mother available twenty-four hours a day, a mother that never scolded her infant and never struck or bit her baby in anger. …”

  –Harry Harlow, “The Nature of Love”

  Mother of Ghost

  Whether of wire or terrycloth,

  there will always be

  Mother. Mine was made

  of ghost. Every move is

  one step away from her.

  I try to backtrack, lose myself in maps.

  I tell myself, Tread nimbly.

  Every step is a newborn

  shadow. Bodies

  fracturing light.

 
MOTHER OF LETTERS

  For hours my mother hovered over us,

  her hand gently guiding mine, her wrist

  a helm for my unsteady ship.

  I knew how to hold a pencil,

  how to grip it between my thumb

  and pointer finger, how to lean softly

  to avoid a callus. I knew how to form

  all my letters perfectly before starting school.

  For every birthday, a new notebook

  would appear wrapped tightly with a bow.

  I would bury my nose inside it

  as if the pages would write themselves

  with my breath. The pages I’d fill with words

  my young tongue was too knotted to express.

  ST. ROSE OF LIMA

  Lips weary with chapped hallelujahs,

  you went to church and learned the power

  of patience. You used to sit in the pew

  and wonder how long it would take before your tears

  would turn to blood, how many prayers

  you must memorize to be worthy

  of that kind of miracle.

  Stained glass windows glowed

  multicolored portraits of a woman

  in prayer. Rose was your patron saint.

  While writing this poem you discover

  she’s the protector of florists,

  embroiderers, and “people ridiculed

  or misunderstood for their piety.”

  Your brother’s laughter rings out

  from across the kitchen table

  all these years later. No one ever asked

  why your hair was falling out.

  While you pretended not to notice

  the bald spot on your scalp, you collected

  the strands of hair and fashioned them

  into crosses. In school you learned Lima

  is a city in South America,

  but all you could think about was her forehead

  wrapped with spikes, her waist weighed down

  by an iron chain. She made her bed with broken glass

  and stone. The thought of her locking the door

  and burning her hands burned like a looping film

  on the inside of your eyelids.

  You knelt at the cross and kept your hands

  in your pockets, pricking your thumb against

  the thorn you found in the garden.

  For years, you slept on the floor

  of your little sister’s bedroom,

  afraid to talk to the darkness alone.

  You asked god for a new

  mattress. Nightmares shattered you

  like mirrors. You turned the lights off

  and on and off and on and off and on.

  Isn’t this the cost of being alive?

  You challenge yourself.

  You rock yourself to sleep.

  THE NIGHT I DREAMED OF WATER

  A man in a boat scoops water

  one rounded palm at a time.

  His hands are porous. He sticks the tip

  of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth

  like a turtle. The water rises. It is my father.

  He is carrying my elderly aunt across

  his shoulders like a yoke.

  She is wailing. Her hair is stormy,

  but her clothes are matching.

  We are in her 93rd Street apartment.

  I can smell her skin on the pillowcases.

  Flowers are wilting off the wallpaper.

  Her silk scarf whirls in the wind. I collect

  the parched petals. Curve my hand

  like the bent bottom of a boat. Petals leak

  through my fingers. The water continues to rise.

  There is no boat, just a man

  scooping water with his hands.

  Front to back. Side to side.

  WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?

  Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Fertile, Iowa. Uncertain, Texas. Hazard,

  Nebraska. Accident, Maryland. Why, Arizona. Hell, Michigan.

  Disappointment, Kentucky. Embarrass, Minnesota. Truth Or

  Consequences, New Mexico. Nameless, Tennessee. No Name,

  Colorado. Nada, Texas. Nothing, Arizona.

  ABSTRACT

  Mother Without a Face

  looks in the mirror. I wonder what creases we share. I wonder how long her hair is. I wonder if she chews on the inside of her mouth until the skin is chafed pulp, if she sucks her teeth when it rains. I wonder if she clings to heat like a monkey to cloth.

  My nose capsizes, an upside down question mark. I pull and pull, the line stretched short.

  MOTHER OF ROCK

  The familiar clack of shoes against tile, click

  of the key in the lock. Wait and rock.

  Your gaze silent and grim, I long for the touch

  that doesn’t come. My tongue caught

  on my mouth’s cage

  tart with sour milk.

  In the picture from your wedding,

  a white lace dress. As if held

  down by the weight of fancy fabric,

  your bones ache to float off the edges

  of the frame. Mother of stone, teach

  me the temperature

  of tomb. Watch me chase my tail.

  Toss me a cloth, a bottle of milk.

  DID YOU KNOW

  my sister was Fed-Exed from Korea?

  you say, dazed under the haze of hospital lights,

  your arm tethered to an intravenous drip

  charging like a box to numbing light.

  You’re twenty-five, adrift in anesthetic fog

  floating through the white sea of hospital hallways,

  and you think of me, the living package

  that changed your life. On the day of my arrival,

  you were a month away from turning four.

  While the buzz of anticipation swirled

  around the airport terminal, your small body

  perched high, anchored in the crook of our father’s arm.

  So this is how babies are born,

  you thought, and everything was yellow.

  Scuffed linoleum tile. Blur of fluorescent lights

  hovering above you. How you must have imagined

  my body rattling in the box during transport

  as our mother scurried to the airport bathroom

  to snap my joints into place.

  Today, we laugh about what you said.

  We laugh until we forget why we’re laughing.

  ABSTRACT

  Foster Mother

  The first time I belonged to a woman,

  my body a fresh bulb broken off

  at the root. She kept me for six months,

  watched spit bubble from my pursed lips.

  I wonder if she ever claimed me,

  if she rocked me to sleep on her chest,

  if she wiped my mouth gently saying,

  There you go, there you are.

  MOTHER OF CLOTH

  During hurricanes, my body tucked tightly

  under blankets and eyes illuminated

  by the pale luster of a plastic nightlight,

  you drew curly cues along my spine

  with your index finger, patted my back

  to the beat of rain pounding on the window.

  When there’s a storm, it means they’re bowling in heaven.

  Claps of thunder are balls tossed

  down the lane. Each flash of lightning

  means an angel just got a strike.

  We would count the seconds between thunder –

  one mississippi, two mississippi, three …

  and I’d shudder in my sheets, hands clasped in prayer

  begging god to hurry up and end the party.

  You wrapped my body in cloth,

  held my hand until you felt the fingers

  loosen and fall. The next time I woke,

  I called your name. And you would come.

  You always came.


  ABSTRACT

  Dreams of Motherhood

  Wire barbed with fragments of love

  or tender cloth that never scolds,

  never strikes, never bites?

  The mothers I find like copper coins,

  heads face up. The ones I collect

  because of their tenderness.

  The nature of a light radiating heat.

  Monkey in the cage, pulling out her hair,

  waiting for someone to claim her.

  What is the opposite of mother?

  CHILD’S PRE-FLIGHT REPORT

  Name in Full: Moon, Yeong Shin

  Case Number: 87C-2411

  Date of Birth: Oct. 22, 1987

  Date of Departure: April 2, 1988

  Name of Escort: Unknown

  Destination: Unknown

  Feeding/Eating:

  She cries with hunger but knows the bottle.

  Sleeping Habit:

  When lying on her side, she wraps her arms around her body. She wakes easily to rustling leaves, rain thrumming on roof tiles, and morning birds greeting the dawn.

  Toilet Training:

  She moves bowels in good form once to twice a day.

  Speaking Ability:

  She will learn quickly when to bite her tongue. For years, she will hold it tightly, teeth clenched. In her mouth, the bitter taste of a broken bloodline.

  Developmental Condition:

  She tends to play well even alone but cries if it’s boring. Placed on stomach, she lifts her head about 90 degrees but gets irritated when it’s beyond her ability.

  Physical Condition:

  6.6 kg., 60 cm at 5 months. Her skin is strong but prone to scarring.

  Character:

  She is rather composed and mild.

  Legal Status:

  The baby, … if it is to survive, must clutch at more than a straw.

  –Harry Harlow, “The Nature of Love”