Tiana Nobile (Video)
- So several of the poems in Cleave
- are in conversation
- with social psychologist Harry Harlow
- who was famous for his
- studies on attachment and relationships
- between caregivers and infants.
- He did this work primarily
- with rhesus monkeys,
- most famously taking them away
- from their mothers and presenting them
- with two surrogate options,
- one made of cloth and one made of wire.
- So I'm gonna start by reading a few poems
- that appear scattered throughout
- the first section of the book that use
- this idea of Harlow's surrogate mothers
- in order to imagine
- different forms of mothers
- from the perspective of the adoptee.
- It starts with an epigraph,
- which is a quote from Harlow's
- research paper called The Nature of Love.
- Quote.
- The surrogate was made
- from a block of wood,
- covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed
- in tan cotton terrycloth.
- A light bulb behind her radiated heat.
- The result was a mother,
- soft, warm, and tender.
- A mother with infinite patience,
- a mother available 24 hours
- a day, a mother that
- never scolded her infant
- and never struck or bit
- her baby in anger, unquote.
- Mother of Ghost.
- Whether of wire or terrycloth,
- there will always be mother.
- Mine was made of ghost.
- Every move is one step away from her.
- I try to backtrack,
- lose myself in maps.
- I tell myself tread nimbly.
- Every step is a newborn shadow, bodies
- fracturing light.
- Mother Without a Face.
- Looks in the mirror.
- I wonder what creases we share.
- I wonder how long her hair is.
- I wonder if she chews
- on the inside of her mouth
- until the skin is chafed pulp.
- If she sucks her teeth when it rains.
- I wonder if she clings to heat
- like a monkey to cloth.
- My nose capsizes
- an upside down question mark.
- I pull and pull,
- the line stretched short.
- Foster Mother.
- The first time I belonged to a woman.
- My body, a fresh bulb
- broken off at the root.
- She kept me for six months,
- watched spit bubble from my pursed lips.
- I wonder if she ever claimed me.
- If she rocked me to sleep on her chest.
- If she wiped my mouth gently saying,
- there you go, there you are.
- Dreams of Motherhood.
- Why are barbed with fragments
- of love or tender cloth
- that never scolds,
- never strikes, never bites?
- The mothers I find like copper
- coins headspace up.
- The ones I collect
- because of their tenderness.
- The nature of a light radiating heat.
- Monkey in the cage
- pulling out her hair,
- waiting for someone to claim her.
- What is the opposite of Mother?
- And throughout the book
- I have a series of poems that I call
- my dictionary poems that
- where in I borrow language
- from the Oxford English
- Dictionary entries on different words.
- So this poem, browsing
- went from the entry on migrant,
- and I think as an adoptee,
- I didn't fully embrace the identity
- of an immigrant for most of my childhood,
- I think growing up
- in a predominantly white space
- in a white family.
- I tried as best as I could to erase that,
- that painful, challenging
- aspect of my origin
- and it's only within the last few years
- that I really started to embrace the fact
- that my own immigrant story,
- even if it is different
- than other peoples that I originated
- in another country and traveled here.
- So this poem.
- It's called Migrant,
- and it's written
- in solidarity around the
- diverse experiences of immigrants
- around the world.
- Migrant.
- Of an animal, especially a bird.
- A wandering specieswhom
- no seas nor places limit.
- A seed who survives
- despite the depths of hard winter.
- The ripple of a herring
- steering her band from icy seas
- to warmer strands.
- To find the usual watering-places
- despite the gauze of death that shrouds
- our eyes is a breathtaking feat.
- Do you ever wonder why
- we felt like happy birds
- brushing our feathers
- on the tips of leaves?
- How we lifted our toes
- from one sandbank and landed - fingertips
- first - on another?
- Why we clutched the dumb
- and tiny creatures of flower
- and blade and sod
- between our budding fists?
- From an origin of buried seeds emerge
- these many-banded dagger wings.
- We, of the sky, the dirt, and the sea.
- We, the seven-league-booters
- and the little-by-littlers.
- We, transmigrated souls, will prevail.
- We will carry ourselves
- into the realms of light.