Richard Siken

Devonian Forest

The beginning of a story is a dangerous place. Anything can happen. The first noun makes a pledge, a mark on the ledger, and things begin their forward motion. The land is covered in moss. The fish are still in the water, though they dream of legs. This is the past: spores, gills, fins. No roots or leaves. Then birds cloud the skies, giant animals conquer the land, the sea peoples go to war on an ocean so vast it’s useless to talk about and soon enough someone’s drinking whiskey sours on the patio alone. I was drinking whiskey sours on the patio alone. I was drinking whiskey sours on the patio alone, I wrote. It wasn’t true. I didn’t even drink back then. The beginning of a story—it isn’t the beginning, there’s always something that comes before. The first word in the Book of Genesis, in Hebrew, starts with B. It’s cautionary. It’s primordial. You have to be careful, things want to happen. Everything is leading up to something all the time. I painted the kitchen red. I did it because he told me not to. I roasted yellow peppers on the blue flame of the stove in the red kitchen. I planted sunflowers under the windows for my birthday. By summer they were tall as ghosts. I am leaving out parts. I am changing the details. I thought that I could write it down and then erase it if I had to but it left a hole. It didn’t track. The incongruities betrayed me. The trail fades, the clearing evaporates. Forest for miles. I said ghosts. They point, these nouns. They promise something. Poppyseed—his favorite dressing. Sunday mornings—I’m the one who ruined them. They pulled whole chapters from the Bible. Someone did. I’m not against it, they were contradictory, they made it confusing: a third glass on the table, an extra hand, too many shadows on the wall.  

Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (forthcoming, Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Siken is a recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.