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THE NIAGARA RIVER

ALSO BY KAY RYAN

Say Uncle

Elephant Rocks

Flamingo Watching

Strangely Marked Metal

Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends

THE NIAGARA RIVER

poems

by
KAY RYAN

Dedication

For Carol

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these poems first appeared:

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR: Tired Blood; Still Life, with Her Things; Legerdemain; Nothing Getting Past, THE ATLANTIC: Hailstorm, BOSTON REVIEW: Caps, Ms.: Late Justice; Hide and Seek, THE NEW CRITERION: The Well or the Cup; Thieves; The Material; Shipwreck, THE NEW YORKER: Green Hills; Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard, PARNASSUS: The Self Is Not Portable, POETRY: Tenderness and Rot; Stardust; Post-Construction; Expectations; Home to Roost; The Niagara River; Backward Miracle; The Other Shoe; Least Action; Tune; Repulsive Theory; The Light of Interiors; Chinese Foot Chart; Sharks’ Teeth; Carrying a Ladder; Almost Without Surface; Blue China Doorknob; Chop; The Best of It; Houdini; Duck; Latents; Rubbing Lamps; Felix Crow; Fake Spots; A Ball Rolls on a Point; He Lit a Fire with Icicles; Atlas; Thin; Tar Babies; Rats’ Tails; On the Difficulty of Drawing Oneself Up; Salvage; Lighthouse Keeping, SPEAK-EASY: Last Chance, THREEPENNY REVIEW: Absences and Breaks (originally titled Not News); No Names; The Past; The Elephant in the Room; Chart, WATER/STONE: Added Significance, YALE REVIEW: Desert Reservoirs; Theft; Weak Forces, ZYZZYVA: Ideal Audience

“Home to Roost” also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribners, 2005). “Chinese Foot Chart” was reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXIX (Pushcart Press, 2005).

The author is deeply grateful to both the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for the great help of their fellowships, and to The Poetry Foundation for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

THE NIAGARA RIVER

THE NIAGARA RIVER

As though

the river were

a floor, we position

our table and chairs

upon it, eat, and

have conversation.

As it moves along,

we notice—as

calmly as though

dining room paintings

were being replaced—

the changing scenes

along the shore. We

do know, we do

know this is the

Niagara River, but

it is hard to remember

what that means.

HOME TO ROOST

The chickens

are circling and

blotting out the

day. The sun is

bright, but the

chickens are in

the way. Yes,

the sky is dark

with chickens,

dense with them.

They turn and

then they turn

again. These

are the chickens

you let loose

one at a time

and small—

various breeds.

Now they have

come home

to roost—all

the same kind

at the same speed.

CARRYING A LADDER

We are always

really carrying

a ladder, but it’s

invisible. We

only know

something’s

the matter:

something precious

crashes; easy doors

prove impassable.

Or, in the body,

there’s too much

swing or off-

center gravity.

And, in the mind,

a drunken capacity,

access to out-of-range

apples. As though

one had a way to climb

out of the damage

and apology.

SHARKS’ TEETH

Everything contains some

silence. Noise gets

its zest from the