Jet Fuel Review
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Kristina Marie Darling

Women and Ghosts


Dark Windows Will Come Early

There is too much beauty in the world. That morning, I stared out at endless mountains, thinking that the landscape would never look the way I felt as I moved through it.

I had traveled one thousand and thirty two miles to see a man I barely knew. We met briefly the year before in a small, eastern city known for its horses. 

When I saw him again, nothing glittered or swooned. Something was off with the weight of his mouth. I wanted to say this, but I could barely speak. 

*

Count your grey hairs
Count your chigger bites
Count your pills…


When one speaks, how does one begin? Most would say arithmetic is the simplest place to start. One window, two cracked plates, an empty glass. It is indeed virtuous to claim objectivity. No one wants to be misled by rhetoric, or worse, affect. 

The young woman shouting in the corridor is promptly escorted out by security. The mathematician parts his lips. He clears his throat to speak. 

*

When I snap my fingers
You will wake in a dear yet unfamiliar place
You will scarcely remember your travail…


When he told me I was lonely, I tried to forget. 

He would remind me of the weather: You must feel terribly alone. 

One night he told me about himself: I imagine you must feel different from the people who aren’t lonely.

I felt my bones crack open, but I couldn’t see the light coming through. 

*
Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth
are small and even…


I suggest all courage is artificial
Her sister did not fail
Noses amuse us and hers not less so
Short fair smart
utterly unsure of herself


Most of us find a way to speak eventually. 

The same young woman is shouting again in the same corridor. Her hair covers her eyes. The guards twist her statements into questions: You wouldn’t what. What is the name of the gentleman. What are you doing. 

But where does this courage come from? 

In poetry, one doesn’t speak, but rather, one is spoken through. Homer’s The Odyssey begins with an invocation to the muses. He is merely their instrument, an opening through which the white thread is unspooled. 

Jack Spicer didn’t believe in muses, but he did believe in martians. His poems were radio transmissions from other worlds, incessantly crackling in languages and voices other than his own. 

C.D. Wright offered herself as a conduit, allowing those who are voiceless speak through her. 

In Tribute to Freud, H.D. writes that it is the unconscious mind that speaks through the poet. Memory is a locked box, and poetry the little silver key.

*

Night. The same pristine field. I want to use language so badly, but I don’t know how. 

*

I was old enough
to know love is blind as the old woman
pulled down the hall by her dog.
Their guns leaned against the wall
but men in those days kept themselves armed
in the dark and rain.
I thought of a burning bush.

And so the domestic objects, debris, and violence of the world around us crystallize in the mind. They are distilled into a single image, which goes up in flames. 

So what are we left with? 

*

It was a definite rupture in the zone in which they interpreted with decreasing frequency…

I look down at my feet. All that’s left is an old radio, a broken shot glass. The walk upstairs begins slowly. The smallest step is always the one covered in ice. 

*

Violence doesn’t always involve the physical body. 

He would look out at the water, watching the rain fall. He always held his phone as though it were a small child. 

This is the only reason I travel, he said. To have an affair. 

I had left the room to change into a bathing suit. But what does it mean to be present. 

I felt a numbness in my fingertips, and when I placed my hand in his, the warmth was gone. 

*

a bed is left open to a mirror
a mirror gazes long and hard at a bed


light fingers the house with its own acoustics
one of them writes this down

one has paper

Violence doesn’t always involve the physical body. He told me I was alone because I was lonely. Stop it, he said, and you’ll meet someone else. 

I pretended I didn’t know about his wife. 

*

How many times did I cross a threshold? 

One morning the rain wouldn’t stop. The mail came later than it usually did. He had sent back the poem I wrote for him in a white envelope. 

When I unfolded it, I saw what he had written. My words buried beneath his. He had told me that I was no longer, and never had been _____________. 

*

To be loved is remarkable and rare. To be voiceless is fairly commonplace. 

*

When violence does involve the physical body, it is often in the naming of it. 

For weeks I chose silence, not wanting to harm what seemed like a delicate man. I stood in the garden, watching lilies open their perfect mouths. 

Darling…

I didn’t mean…

I believe you are misunderstanding me… 

There is too much beauty in the world. 

So I begin gathering my things to go. My white dress a hothouse flower fading in the tremendous heat. 

*

How does one re-enter language? 

In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva describes mourning as a loss of language. Words no longer correspond to things in the world: a coffee cup, a broken latch, a small printed receipt from the airline ticket counter. 

We reenter language by taking it apart. By dismantling it, piece by piece. 

When we see the bones crack open, we also the light coming through. 

*

How many threads have I broken with my teeth. How many times
have I looked at the stars and felt ill…


Throughout Steal Away, C.D. Wright inhabits the voices of others, even those we might deem glaringly insignificant. 

It is through the juxtaposition of voices, texts, and types of language that she creates friction. 

I had always wondered what the simple act of striking sparks could do. For instance, can the light be caught in a jar. Could it be made to power a blow-dryer. Will the sparks ever be visible outside this body, these rooms. 

Heat has been known to generate fires. For C.D. Wright, it is the spark of one voice against another that allows her words to shine through more clearly. 

Voices often exist in contrast with one another. It is for this reason that the jeweler places the diamond against black velvet. He takes his measurements and leaves in silence. 

In the deserts of New Mexico, heat abounds, and so does fire. I place the dead flowers on the pile of brush. I open my mouth to speak. 

 
 
 
--
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose, which include VOW and SCORCHED ALTAR: SELECTED POEMS & STORIES 2007-2014. Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. She was recently selected as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

    Get updates from jet fuel review

Subscribe to Newsletter
© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022