The Ants, and: Only Part of It

Abstract

The Ants, and: Only Part of It Marianne Boruch (bio) The Ants Sweet poison did zero, squat, nothing,clear drops from the tube where light comesto the kitchen as window, ascivilized hole in the house out of which—lo, the famous dawn, the famous golden hourof film directors, ditto late afternoonwhich casts an etching on pale cabinets,the skeleton plum tree, leavesshivering a magic-lantern show backto 1900 between oceans where slow-motioncreatures down-deep and quicken. Meanwhile,those ants. The get-rid-of-them, unsaid. That I do it at all, my pulling rankbecause I’m so much bigger. . . . Or smaller,i.e., desperate. My inner eyeclosing. I just want my breadboard back.Clearly ants have eternityon their side. Circles of, scatters of, crooked lines stoppingat those tiny bits of gel said to off themstraightaway. Over and over, they’rebingeing! Yum, so good!—if they critiquelike we do, so full of ourselves.Still the ants come, lovingwhat should kill them, in mobs oralone as morning, as evening.The mind gets like that, one emptyaching way or another. [End Page 22] Only Part of It is blue, or once was. Only blue dicetossed from a cupand game on! Only nonsense in poemsis allowed, on occasion,same for a reckoning, the lowdown, proof.A dramatic final realizationthe least part of it reallygets old fast or it’s ridiculously memorable. Only part of the spider is consideredthe champion of spit spun for the web, ongoingfor a millennium-plus + plus. Needless to say, ALERT! Two rules—not everything is edible. Nevertheless, to say“part ice cream” is welcome.Part dessert is always still dessert. Only part of who I am is necessaryto me or to anyone. Part of someone else is stillsomeone else, like a hand, the one wavinghey, I’m over here! orgoodbye, goodbye! while stepping into a carfor some far far and away. Only part of the letter we keep readingover and over is legible. Onlycertain words survive their cursive nether-shape,who wrote what and when and why. Only parts of important words are important,like the vowels, the fuzzy parts,the distant yearning parts,the A, the E, the O, on and on via dog sled [End Page 23] and narrow-gauge railway to getthe crucial meds over and throughMt. Whatever to arrive atthe most unfathomable letter U, its thinking thisjust an ordinary picnic near the seawith busy watertight creatures down underneither happy nor unhappy. Who kneweveryone was that sick? Part of what I am writing now isright now and stops here. The rest isancient, backed up intoanyone’s dna but oh, the blue secret part,the color turning bright red whenHomer bled all overthe mythic place. . . . Oh yes. Rising out of the blue, only partsof said blood can be trusted,the rosy-fingered dawn included. [End Page 24] Marianne Boruch marianne boruch’s 11 books of poems include Bestiary Dark (Copper Canyon 2021). Among her honors: the Kingsley-Tufts for The Book of Hours plus fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the nea, the Rockefeller’s Bellagio Center, MacDowell, Yaddo, national parks (Denali and Isle Royale), and two Fulbright Scholarships (Scotland and Australia). Copyright © 2023 Marianne Boruch ...