In Their Own Words
Eric Linsker's “Rare Earths”
Rare Earths
Playing with his phone in her
Hand, frosty kit, a cloud in private
Public waves that Foxconn bundles, one after
Another with assumptions, no
Compromise, promise with me your content
Will return in netting over time, filming grainy
Footage, her focus broke
The waves on a velvet hunt, a wave from a
Beached girl, pissing a hole
For shit older than anger, a fox
In hell, whose broken
Heart would make me mine
From La Far (University of Iowa Press, 2014). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
On "Rare Earths"
"What we shall see across time is a marked decay of the confidence in compensation for states of loss which give rise to poems."—Allen Grossman
For "poems" read, too, insurrections, from insurgere, "rise up." The word "Foxconn" was once the word "morning."
In the meantime I returned again and again, on my then-girlfriend's yoga mat I wasn't using for yoga, to images of the webbed netting to stop suicide at Foxconn. At the same time I learned gray foxes sleep in trees, in dens as much as 30 feet from the ground. I remembered hearing at 16 Beaver of treehouses connected by netting, occupied through the summer of 2011 in Puerta del Sol.
Whose broken heart would make me mine: the fox's in hell? the beached girl's? the her's? And make me mine: make me my own (self)? make me my own broken heart? What's the difference? (Remembering I'm not me.)
Not much, in the poem, which hates and loves that in a psycho-economy and -geography of rare earths, the "broke" returns as the "broken."
Still, in repetitions with a difference, suicide netting could be slept in, occupied. Foxes could fill Foxconn, much as humans fill squares. Eros and Thanatos rest and resist together where sea meets land.
Like suicide netting for treehouses, cruelty could play a part in kindness, "pissing a hole / For shit older than anger." The pronomial subject come into focus only after a six-line delay, only to dissolve at water's edge. The lyric speaker be bundled into form.
"Rare Earths" was the last poem written in La Far. After Grossman's "marked decay," what confidence still lasts returns in form's assumptions: breaking on "broken" makes Heart make, however conditionally.
