Elizabeth Cantwell

Elizabeth Cantwell is a PhD student in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, where she also acts as Editor in Chief of Gold Line Press. Her poems have recently appeared (or are forthcoming) in such journals as the Indiana Review, PANK, Matter, The Los Angeles Review, La Petite Zine, and RHINO. 

Learning Curve   

The Atlantic Ocean had been burning

for four days    We were told to stay inside

but we’d forgotten which houses

belonged to us    Now we lie on the beach  

watching the local theater company’s

production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream    

In the audience one lumbering

ash man walks up to an ash  

woman and leans over    He looks

surprised at all the ash    Like a man who

hits a deer with his car and stops

to see his full name written on its back  

in Sharpie    On the makeshift stage

Helena speaks of cherries    We try to know

what cherries taste like    Your gas mask

on top of my opera gloves    The whole  

wide world doused in ethanol and lit

up    We’d peel our skins off

for each other    for one glorious incandescent

cruise    one saltwater bed of again   again    

Out of the corner of the sky

something is writing words    They

look like they are in our language

But we both fail to read them    Maybe this  

is starting over  





My Memories of You Are Silent 

In that country there is a train

that stops when it gets tired    It doesn’t bother

to read the signs    There is a man in my car

who claims to be French

but does not understand me

when I ask quelle heure

est-il    He shows me a picture of a man

and points to himself    And the man

in the picture has a different

face    For weeks I have been woken up

by dreams in which I open my mouth

to speak    and only then discover

I am underwater    In the backseat of

a cab I go through all the Arabic phrases

I know in my head    how much  

is the bread   and    the son

is in the garden with the cow    and    I love,

I am a woman    In the front seat

it sounds like the cab driver is yelling

at the man next to him    I think

they are discussing the best streets

to take    Meanwhile under another country’s

ocean certain navy officers produce

horrible noises to scare away

the whales    The navy needs this portion

of the ocean to be devoid of whales

so they can perform

exercises     No one in the navy

bothers to learn the language

of the whales    They think that if their noises

are loud enough 

the whales will get the gist    In the city

I meet another American woman    She says

she is having a party in her apartment

When I get there everyone is speaking

English    We sit on a rug in the middle

of the floor and she serves us

Hamburger Helper    Everyone is talking

very loudly and I do not have anything to say

to any of them    In the middle of a bite

of artificially colored pasta

I look up and see you looking

at me    You glance at your plate

and then back up at me and

you roll your eyes    We do not speak

a word out loud    I swim up through

the surface of the water

and take a deep breath    I hope the whales

are still living in that ocean    saying

to each other    what was all

that noise about   

Comments

[Ola]

I am absolutely shocked at how beautiful your poem "Learning Curve" is. It's delicious. Thank you.