All I Can Have are Field Recordings of the Field

Kristina Martino
I can never have the field. I can never halve the
field, make a helix of my hands and hold the
halves

like pictures of the field—or fields—and affix one

feeling to the fields—or the infinite field—and stay
that way

I can walk down to the bog, the field

under-foliate-feet, in a bloodflow motion towards
the beating

of the bullfrogs’ black-lacteous tactile pool and

listen to the unilluminable below-surface stirring,

gravid ruckus of drooling purr and primordial bluebrown

blur. I can aggravate the grating godhood and glisten

of preening slime—its opaque, plumbeous,

tympanic slurps—an inside-outside alertness
bur-bur-bur-bur-

burrowing, harping with pings and plops

(lurches), and make the mossy froth go
berserk with silence,

then foofaraw when the bog in the field senses I am

nothing to fear. I can hear amphibious amour fou
pulsing

under a blue-green gasoline film, spongiform but

formless, boiling with blotched air-bubble let-go, life
fumping

the surface in slicks of upward rain and glossopalatine

pops and liquid crop circles. I can stop here and
listen

in time with the bobolink and make my bel

memento, my untremendous tremolo and
rinky-dink dictation.

In the fable, the animal smells fear and so does the

fool. I think to myself—in my skull’s skeletal
bell-shape—
I am both. I am both. I am both, and I can hold it
together.