by Matthew Baker
Orientation: A Zuihitsu
I lie on the couch, feet raised toward the arm rest, a book propped against
my chest. I lie as the sun burnishes the carpet a beige-gold hue in the afternoon.
My body a compass needle. Each direction lying in wait:
“Orientation” comes originally from the French verborienter. It suggests the relative
position or direction of a thing or how a thing lies.
As a boy, I was pressured to hide the gazes I directed at other boys, at men
whose muscles mystified me—a lie coded into my eyes.
Where, instead, should I have directed my looking?
When would I be able to gaze
unconditionally, notice
a gaze pointed at me?
Therein lay the problem—conditions. Conditions like fences
around which my body could not move.
In a corral of conditions, the poem offered a map. In the poem, I was
perpetually displaced trying to find a location in which to fill out a new
version of my body, of his body—his body that will enter me
or come toward me saying, “You may lie here undisturbed
your feet in the grass, your arms splayed, your head on my chest.”
The poem is a portal. But is it also a lie? As I lie, it transports my mind,
my eyes following each line as it rises in the west and breaks
in the east; the loop begins again, and again I follow,
distance accumulating like energy in the battery of my brain.
But when I lay the book down, the pen down,
the room, the house, the town tell the same story as before.
And so I must stop lying, and in moving discover
my body, his body, desire, home, the pitch of pedals pressed to the floor.
In the old city, I could not act on my gazes. Or did not
imagine I could. There was the condition of doubt. Like a ghost
taunting me, cooing, convincing me to question my desire:
his body, his body? No, her her her—
The poem became a condition. I wrote about
women I needed to desire. No body of mine. Desert and
sage sweeping a dry horizon. The poem as dressing, as
landscape in which I could not turn, my bodiless eyes transfixed.
Because I was stuck, because I thought myself
unworthy, I threw myself into
what I believed was the form of the poet:
I shaved the sides of my head and began to wear thick
rimmed glasses; I rolled up my sleeves and displayed
my ink. My arm a tapestry of eyes and skulls, of ears and insects.
I began to hum my words in the halls. I wrote about words
calling to each other across the plain of the page.
I received praise for the idea of what I’d written.
I felt stronger, thought
if I kept piling on consonants I would become
a cluster of rough
sounds sharp enough to cut through steel—
the poem as knife; the poet as knight.
Time passed. I saw I had surrounded myself
with objects, among them people, among them peaks
of snow rimmed in aspens, hot winds, a
form of “me.” But,
a hole remained.
Ahmed writes, “The lines that allow us to find our way, those that are ‘in front’ of us, also make certain things, and not others, available. When we follow specific lines, some things become reachable and others remain or even become out of reach.”
Maybe it was loneliness. I was passing Lake Meade and then the Hoover Dam. I wondered if leaving the West might harm my ability to hold on to any objects in my life.
Important objects in my Western life:
one car,
one bar at which I had become a regular,
two bookshelves of poetry,
a desk inherited from a long-gone friend,
and a rented, ranch-style home overlooking a spillway.
In the spillway: paths cut through short grass, dust,
echoes of zephyr each night. In another poem,
I listen to the creak of my neighbor’s fence
and hum to drown out the noise.
Or maybe imagining loss made it palpable. If I could no longer see them, would I forget the night scorpions, the weeds, the Truckee snaking straight through town? If I continued to ignore my body, would my desire disappear?
My desire began to boi l.
The poem m or phed. The poem became obsess ed
with movement. New
city. My h and in
the grass. Gl int of gl ass. L
ake
in the middle of the new city. His h a n d s
grasping my hips—
Clean slate.
Itwasanonymousravenousanew
manamonthmybodyarevolvingdoor—
It was one summer.
A couch. A bed. The back of a car.
His heft atop me. I was sore.
I was dizzied by the ease:
my hands his hands his stomach pressed to my back my feet around his shoulders in the dark horns blaring from the freeway beyond the barrier wall—
I write a poem about growing up in which I kiss a man for the first time through his driver’s side window after I run down my childhood street to stop him from leaving.
In many ways, my life began that night: sweat-covered, exhaust fuming, the unlit windows of the surrounding houses, green glow from the dashboard, his beard grazing my chin—
I would not see him again.
In the new city, a man cat-called me as I walked hand-in-hand with another man who would soon leave me.
I tried to make eye contact with my caller, but he was already driving away. I walked down the block and across the rainbow sidewalk with the man who would leave me. We slipped into a club where he unbuttoned my shirt and bought us beers.
We sat on the balcony, his hands on my knees, and between stories about his mother’s recent criminal convictions and threats of deportation, I watched bodies float by on the pavement below.
I wondered if this might be the it for which I had so long longed—
(In the poem, “it” refers to something that can fill the hole. “It” is
love, or “it” is satisfaction, or “it” is ease, or “it” is shape.)
After the man who would leave me left me,
I opened an app. Each tap opened
a line, a vein.
I sifted the slag
until I filled
my cart with directions.
After another month, each of those directions led
to a dead end, too.
Maybe it was a mistake to tumble into any available sheets.
When driving, I turn the radio’s volume high enough to drown out
the rush of wind past my windows.
It creates a silence in which I am lost.
I feel the pedal beneath my foot; my muscles press then contract. Muffler
groan. Flash of ambulance speeding across an overpass.
I am headed somewhere.
I am headed
somewhere. I am
headed somewhere.
I write this poem in which everything in my life seems like a void,
but I leave out the happier parts for effect.
This is not a true-true poem.
A poem cannot be true-true; it is
a convincing line, and it can
send you anywhere.
End of another summer—
Begrudgingly, I submit,
the new city has slowly turned into a life:
Mapped with those taps, dinners, my hands working the buckle
of his belt and his belt, my knees on
the floor, my back lying on his couch his bed.
Mapped with more animals, walks, pollen thick as mud.
Map without land
-marks. Poem of coming
together, of leaving
alone—
But even then, I took a step forward—
The form clear as new glass.
Of course, when I walked into it, I couldn’t
a void the cr acks.
Author Matthew W. Baker (he/him) is a poet and professor currently living in Texas where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on aesthetics and contemporary U.S. poetry. He is also the author of the chapbook Undoing the Hide’s Taut Musculature (FLP 2019), and other craft essays and poems appear in Cleaver, Muzzle Magazine, The Southern Review, The Atlanta Review, and Booth Journal, among others. You can follow him for more of his work on Instagram @emembakes.
Artist Asem Moustafa Ahmed (he/him) is a New Jersey-based artist specializing in painting, portraiture, and figure drawing, with additional interests in sculpture, printmaking, and jewelry-making. Born in Marrakech, Morocco, and of Egyptian heritage, Asem moved to Jersey City at the age of nine. Immersed in the vibrant visual cultures of North Africa and inspired by the diversity of his new home, he developed a deep passion for art from an early age. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and later earned his Master’s degree from the New York Academy of Art, studying under artists such as Dan Thompson, Mario A. Robinson, and Randolphlee McIver. Asem now works from his studio, creating richly textured and expressive works that celebrate the color, form, and spirit of the world around him. You can find more of his work on his website: http://www.asemfineart.com/.
Gulf Stream Magazine 