Magdalena Zurawski

• THE REMAINDERS 

•  
• for Duncan and Blaser

• 1.
•  
• If you studied business 
• in school you studied rules and 
• principles you learned 
• that business is work done 
•  
• by animals a team of horses 
• will thresh three hundred bushels 
• a day and even one horse 
• with a twenty-five-dollar machine 
•  
• can be good business a horse 
• which eats only a moderate quantity 
• of food will do as much business 
• as one that eats continually and 
•  
• men hired to mend harnesses 
• must be kept busy mending 
• harnesses if you are to do good 
• business a supervisor needs no 
•  
• experience he must only consult 
• analyze and explain the beauty 
• of business is that there are 
• many animals to do it for you 
•  
• should you not care for horses 
• several pharmacists will fill 
• prescriptions all day long and 
• several doctors will write 
•  
• prescriptions for every patient 
• even a pecan farm if supervised 
• correctly can be good business 
• as long as Billy drives the shaker 
•  
• through the orchard once 
• the shuck has split and Jim 
• sweeps the fallen nuts into 
• windrows and the harvesters 
•  
• follow to load the nuts into 
• wagons make sure your grade B 
• nuts are separated out by 
• quality control “Mammoth Pecans” 
•  
• can vary a great deal in 
• size from one season to
• the next you will know if
• you have supervised nut
•  
• production well if Jean from Idaho 
• sends a note stating your packing 
• and shipping is exceptional
• business is work done by animals
•  
• all the world is an animal a good
• business man is a zookeeper
• you learned this in school
• poetry however is something else

• 2.

I had found the book among the remainders the pages almost empty with words and when I was quiet they heard me and found the little soul inside me large enough to open themselves there into an elsewhere where I resided and often invited you too and one night a single word opened to me to repeat itself as if I were its instrument I was helpless in its cycle it began not unlike a school lesson simple sentences

•  
• the weather broke
• the bough broke
• my voice broke

that's where it began and it did not stop there my mouth would not tire and it let loose every break it could have known so that at 3 a.m. if you had entered the room you would have found me muttering—

•  
• my heart is breaking and my eyes are dim
•  
•                   and above me
•                   the billows break
•  
•                                       I have the delusion that no
•                                       campaign can break
•                                       the neck of this rebellion
•                                              
•                                                 a bank breaks and on every side of me workmen are discharged
•  
•                          the hounds break the fox
•                          while the gentlemen watch
•  
• most of their bombs break before they fall and there is no breath of air to break the wave
•  
• and so on I spoke until finally the words released me
• into Virgil and had me thrice utter
•  
•                   verse breaks the ground
•                   verse breaks the ground
•                   verse breaks the ground
•  
• shortly before dawn   I was desperate for sleep

                   when I awoke the world had not changed so I asked myself                             where is it that you choose to live and then in the constellation of trees behind the house I saw a door of light and there I entered and took on the light and felt my elsewhere breaking loose and I said to the world      business is work done by animals but poetry is something else

• 3.
•  
• There’s something in a word that remains outside
• watches the hounds break up a fox
•  
•               the weather brought
•               an injured deer
•               near the door
•               so I would
•               know that our
•               commonwealth is grief—
•               the most unstable
•               element of language—
•               that vowel unsettled
•               in the mouth
•  
•                                           it had been raining seven days and seven nights and we had grown
•                         used to sitting in the dark
•                                           if they had come with their guns I would have told them
• about the strip mall a bookstore of remainders on metal shelves what’s the shame of poetry
•               I would have said but no one came

• 4.
•  
• and I said to myself that other,
• Soldier, care for the O in the poem
• and take on light
• become astral
•  
• but my flesh, Sir,
• remains here, I said, I am
• so reasonable it leaves me
• a failed escape,
•  
• Soldier, I said, there is a door
• a break there in the mountain
• wall if you will a there there
•  
• no, Sir, I said, all the world
• is an animal and I am an animal and
• the poem is an animal,
•  
• Soldier, I said, I command you to the field
• I command you to make the words
• an elsewhere
•  
• but, Sir, I said, each time I return
• to the field I see nothing but animals
• I know nothing but animals, Sir,
•  
• they have made my mind into nothing but animal,
• Soldier, I command you, lift your snout up
•  

MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI wrote Companion Animal (Litmus), which won the 2016 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the author of a novel, The Bruise (FC2). She teaches at the University of Georgia and lives in Athens, Georgia.