Corrida de Toros, and: Fig, and: After the Twentieth Century, and: Lacan at the Carousel, and: I Want You Dangerously, and: Revolution

Abstract

Corrida de Toros, and: Fig, and: After the Twentieth Century, and: Lacan at the Carousel, and: I Want You Dangerously, and: Revolution Danielle Cadena Deulen (bio) [End Page 23] Corrida de Toros Danielle Cadena Deulen (bio) From earth, each staris a likeness of the other, which is why divinationis impossible—the constellations are not Braille, but piercings,wounds in the neck of a bull. Perhaps the sky is a matador's scarlet.Or, no—perhaps the sky is the stadium in which we sit, watchingthe bull, the banderilleros stabbing his neck, the way he falters,throws his head wildly, his yellow eyes trying to focuson the source of pain— The men are drinking from leather flasks of wine and the womenavert their eyes, or a few young men avert their eyesand some young women lean toward the scene so far forward it seemsthey'll fall out of the sky toward the earth again, where their bodies will be trampledor swell with children. The mothers fret at this,their fingers drawing near the frayed ends of their daughters' hairas if their children were fabrics they could weavewithout touching. Everyone is yelling kill the bull, except those who murmur I want to dieinto their palms, into the palms of their neighborswho turn back to their wine, or stand and begin to weep.The bull staggers and we swarm into the arena to drive steel points trussed with ribboninto his crest, his throat, his knees—until the matadordrops his sword, sprawls in the dust. Night shifts around us,mud-dark and furious—clouds like white foam in the mouthof the sky, and we stare a long while at the scene we rendered, trying to recallhow we arrived. Slowly, the curved horn of the moonrises. Lament settles in the stadium tiers. [End Page 24] Some in the crowd begin to chant there is no balmto assuage the mark of the body. Others sing there is no star that leads us away from ourselves. [End Page 25] Danielle Cadena Deulen "When writing, I always begin with the constraint of a big idea—then stray. So my poems are deviant. Three published here ('Corrida de Toros,' 'Fig' and 'I Want You Dangerously') are included in the collection that will debut this winter, my intent for which was to examine the trope of the fruit in Western literature—its literal forms, mythos and psychosexual connotations. That's what I meant to write. You see here how the poems got pushy, and I ended up with a bullfight, a war in Tibet and a hurricane. The other three ('After the Twentieth Century,' 'Lacan at the Carousel' and 'Revolution') are part of a new poetry collection I'm working on—an assay of the theoretical and social evolution of psychology. That's the big idea, anyway, though I'll likely compose the poems through digression." Danielle Cadena Deulen is a poet and essayist. Her first collection of poems, Lovely Asunder, won the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize and will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2011. Her first collection of essays, The Riots, recently won the AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction and will be published by the University of Georgia Press. Formerly, she was a Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and currently lives in Salt Lake City, where she is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Utah. Copyright © 2010 The Curators of the University of Missouri Fig Danielle Cadena Deulen (bio) The wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus restedunder a fig tree—a ligneous known for its peculiarinflorescence concealed within the body of its fruit. Being neither fruit nor flower, but part of both, the figis really a hollow, fleshy receptacle enclosing a multitudeof flowers, which never see light, yet come to full perfection by ripening their seeds inward. Meditative,already known as the Bodhi tree before GautamaBuddha reached enlightenment beneath it. Sing to...