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    Incorrect Merciful Impulses
    Incorrect Merciful Impulses
    Incorrect Merciful Impulses
    Ebook89 pages28 minutes

    Incorrect Merciful Impulses

    By Camille Rankine

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    "A poet to watch."O Magazine

    "I tell the truth, but I try to be kind about it."Camille Rankine in 12 Questions

    Named "a poet to watch" by O Magazine, Camille Rankine's debut collection is a series of provocations and explorations. Rankine's short, lyric poems are sharp, agonized, and exquisite, exploring themes of doubt and identity. The collection's sense of continuity and coherence comes through recurring poem types, including "still lifes," "instructions," and "symptoms."

    From "Symptoms of Aftermath":

    When I am saved, a slim nurse
    leans out of the white light. I need
    to hear your voice, sweetheart. I see
    my escape. I walk into the water.
    The sky is blue like the ocean,
    which is blue like the sky.

    Camille Rankine is the author of the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Prize and a MacDowell fellowship, her poetry appears in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, and other publications. Currently, she is assistant director of the MFA program in creative writing at Manhattanville College and lives in Harlem.

    Editor's Note

    Sharp & lovely…

    Camille Rankine’s debut collection has put her on the map. Her short lyric poems cast shadows as often as they illuminate, bringing even the most mundane trivialities into sharp and beautiful relief.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateAug 1, 2016
    ISBN9781619321496
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      Book preview

      Incorrect Merciful Impulses - Camille Rankine

      One

      Tender

      Dear patriot

      Dear catastrophe

      None of this means what we thought it did

      Dear bone fragments

      Dear displacement

      Dear broken skin

      I am in over my head

      Dear prisoner

      Dear, dear wounded

      You have earned our respect

      Dear glad hands, curbed dog

      Dear perfect object

      The same night awaits us

      Dear put upon

      The day folds over and begins again

      Dear bad animal

      Dear caged thing

      There was something about you

      Symptoms of Prophecy

      In the new century,

      we lose the art of many things.

      For example, at the beep, I communicate

      using the wrong machine.

      I called to say we have two lives

      and only one of them is real.

      When the phone rings: you could be anybody.

      In the evening: you are homeless

      and hunting for good light, as safe a place

      as any to make a bed for the night.

      In both my lives, my nerves go bust.

      I’m certain that I’m not

      as I appear, that I’m a figment and

      you’re not really here.

      The struggle

      is authenticity.

      I have a message.

      You must believe me.

      Still Life with Spurious Picturesque

      The thought insists upon itself. The dead

      body of it, what you have put together:

      The hillside won’t make sense.

      You run through the trees, but the trees

      lead nowhere.

      Didn’t the sky come down on you like.

      Didn’t you think you saw.

      The irrational forest,

      your stupid mouth,

      a breath stillborn.

      Define: Lake.

      Ink stain. The cold, cold water.

      The heart’s slow beat.

      There is no imagining anymore. You awake

      and everything is flatter. You go outside

      and there is nothing to see.

      Dear Enemy:

      In the city, the climate is hostile, which suits me. The people are all demand: a sequel, a protagonist, something new to fear. Without you, we are uneasy — what disquiet in this lack, all this emptiness to fill. Your fury is insistent, a ringing in my ear. The hazard is high, which heightens my desire. Intelligence suggests we were designed this way, and the city, built to keep you out, keep me in need. The high ground is under attack, but the struggle feels

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