Madeleine Cravens

Object Permanence 

I want to know how things will end. I’ve heard of the beginning,
how grains of pollen fell from the poplars. Then a little choral 

music, cavalry, bright skirmish on the hillside, a thousand 
years of this. Here is a flute and here is a steamship. Here is a gun 

and your grandmother’s ring. The devil has seven blue heads,
and when we draw him on the inside of the chapel, each one 

tells a different lie. How many gods do you believe in?
How many good men? The story of the world can be told 

in relation to umbrellas, invented in the seventh century 
when we finally had enough rain. Don’t look at the gun

directly. And don’t remove the flute from its sheath of ice.
The end’s already in motion, the end was starting this whole

time and today Brooklyn is a beautiful, devastating autumn.
Everyone I love is dancing in the plaza. A band plays below 

the archway, we’re drinking wine and rolling up our sleeves 
to show the soft parts of our arms. When this ends I hope

it ends completely. How brave I feel, right now, watching
my old friends beside my father and imagining the end

as one imagines something certain, a birthday or a doctor’s
visit. Not like last year when we watched the movie about

ruins—I ignored the crusted amphitheater and wanted
to touch you. It was February. You wore a long blue coat.

Inheritance

Inside the house, we said our names, and loved 
each other in the historic way, with bartering and 
harsh alliances. We slept soundly on the train as it 
moved through stations, stopping only with the mechanical 
voice of the conductor. Outside the house: five eggs
frying in the diner, sad manta rays at the aquarium, 
green parrots roosting in the local cemetery. Outside 
the house: hill good for sledding, hill bad for sledding, 
deep hole where the towers were. Branches after female
hurricane. Inconvenient dumpster fire. But each day
came without permission, in collections of subway 
tokens, cracked-open rose quartz, certain Polaroid
of parents newly married in Grand Central. Dumb 
looks of shock. Slackened jaws. It must be summer
because they’re sweating, astrological blue ceiling 
blinking stop but the background crowd unbothered—
hordes of people eating, leaving, or just returning 
home, and arriving far too late, I know, but with 
offers of repentance, coffee, fresh bodega flowers. 

Most Days I Honestly Believe 

That in Los Angeles, everyone loves 
a man named Josh, and he is kind, knows 
nature, knows exactly what to do when the car 
breaks down. Josh is calm in Hollywood, 
like an actor in a silent movie. He does not 
raise his voice, not even for emergencies, 
and as the fires burn this makes you want a life 
with him. Josh fixed your bike. Josh owns knives. 
With Josh you’re in good hands forever. You never 
have to worry about break-ins, about earthquakes
or tsunamis. And look, he doesn’t even care
that you kissed a girl in college—he’s cool 
with it, he’s so relaxed, he’d love to meet me. 
They always want to meet me. Your family 
really likes him. And when you watch him 
weed the garden, bending down as everything 
goes up in crimson, you almost want a son. 
Because Josh has the right skills for survival: 
if storms roll in, he’s seen them all before.

If Any Plot Opens 

Your father ties his scarf around my neck. 
Smart girl, he says, what is it that you want.
I admit it: I love being watched. But I know
one should never ask for a glass of water 
while a man is counting his money. In bed
you ask about the difference between disaster 
and calamity, a ravine filled with little white 
birds—and now there is a forest thick with 
girl, with governess and honey. My therapist
sends me an email about regret and culpability. 
The diagram about regret has several arrows. 
Outside the window, trees are moving. A truck
idles next to a concrete wall. From the clearing 
emerge two women named Catherine. I dislike 
both equally—them or anyone—doll feet in 
the electric socket. They dance in the parking lot. 
They are not listening to my story about revenge. 
On television, an actress answers questions. 
The alligator builds a nest of leaves, and rot 
from the leaves emits a foul smell. We drove 
north. I wanted to see what would happen
if I swam outside my body. And when we 
saw the gas station abandoned in the snow,
I was afraid, and thought of Russian history.

Beirut  

Mornings, I watched groups of runners 
from my balcony. A one-eyed cat roamed 
the street below. My neighbors all had purple shutters 
strung together with steel wire. I had one friend. 
Outside the city, we found a mill abandoned
on a hillside, or some structure similar 
to a mill, threshing pieces oxidized by mist. 
A goat ran toward us, baring teeth. 
There was often a problem of electricity. 
I bought a space heater and set it near 
my platform bed, which stood on wooden
risers. At the edge of the bed I waited. Then it 
was winter, a word synonymous with rain. 
I understood less of any language by the day. 
When we pulled off the highway to walk 
through the valley, I heard a young boy
singing, but saw only his mother. 

And when I visited another city, in the north,
I arrived just as the famous market closed. 
At dusk, a sudden rolling down of curtains. 
I dreamed about my sister in Cleveland. 
We still weren’t speaking. The year spun out 
from under me, a rush of jasmine, vocal 
traffic. How I repeated to myself or anyone—
a nun, a repairman who had come
to fix my sink—I live here. 

About the Author

Madeleine Cravens was the first-place winner of Narrative Magazine’s 2021 Poetry Contest and 2020 30 Below Contest, a semifinalist for the 92nd Street Y’s 2021 Discovery Prize, a finalist for the 2021 Hunger Mountain Ruth Stone Prize, and a runner-up for the Key West Literary Seminar’s 2021 Scott Merrill Award.