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    Karyotype
    Karyotype
    Karyotype
    Ebook105 pages36 minutes

    Karyotype

    By Kim Trainor

    ()

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    About this ebook

    At the heart of Karyotype is the Beauty of Loulan, a woman who lived four thousand years ago, her body preserved in the cool, dry sands of the Taklamakan Desert. Karyotype’s poems range from the title sequence, which explores the DNA and woven textiles of this woman and her vanished people (a karyotype is the characteristic chromosome complement of a species), to the firebombing of the National Library of Sarajevo, from an abecedarian hymn on the International Red Cross “Book of Belongings” to the experience of watching the televised invasion of Iraq in the dark of a Montreal night. The Beauty of Loulan becomes a symbol of the ephemerality of human genetic and cultural texts, and of our chances for survival.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateFeb 7, 2016
    ISBN9781771313803
    Karyotype

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      Book preview

      Karyotype - Kim Trainor

      Karyotype

      Karyotype

      Kim Trainor

      Brick Books

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Trainor, Kim, 1970–, author

      Karyotype / Kim Trainor.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-77131-380-3

      I. Title.

      PS8639.R355K37 2015           C811’.6           C2015-903676-3

      We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

      The author photo was taken by Kristie Trainor.

      The cover image is a photograph by Jeffery Newbury of the Beauty of Loulan.

      Cover design by Marijke Friesen.

      Print design and layout by Marijke Friesen.

      Brick Books

      431 Boler Road, Box 20081

      London, Ontario N6K 4G6

      www.brickbooks.ca

      About this book

      At the heart of Karyotype is the Beauty of Loulan, a woman who lived four thousand years ago, her body preserved in the cool, dry sands of the Taklamakan Desert. Karyotype’s poems range from the title sequence, which explores the DNA and woven textiles of this woman and her vanished people (a karyotype is the characteristic chromosome complement of a species), to the firebombing of the National Library of Sarajevo, from an abecedarian hymn on the International Red Cross Book of Belongings to the experience of watching the televised invasion of Iraq in the dark of a Montreal night. The Beauty of Loulan becomes a symbol of the ephemerality of human genetic and cultural texts, and of our chances for survival.

      for Madeleine, Finn, and Kieran

      Table of Contents

      I.

      Karyotype I–XXIII

      II.

      On the ordering of chaotic bodies of poetry

      Oxyrhynchus

      The semantic fields of glass and other transparent materials in the poetry of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński

      Field notes: Arras 1917

      Russian notebook: Moscow 1918–1920

      Russian notebook: Voronezh 1935–1937

      In the long hours of darkness, Baghdad shakes to the constant low rumble of B-52s

      Poem from a burnt notebook

      Ash

      III.

      How to make a human karyotype

      Cradle song: Six variations

      Blue-eyed boy

      Lines on a Cherchen grave

      Tokharian love song

      That which is woven

      Funeral rites

      IV.

      Nothing is lost

      Notes

      Acknowledgements

      Biographical Note

      I.

      Karyotype

      I

      They peel her desiccated beauty—

      soft-petalled husks of chestnut brown,

      her skull in its silken pod—tease

      open the parchment skin to flesh

      stitched through with blue-dyed veins and pearls

      of bone. What are they looking for

      in their protection of white mask

      and gown? I sit next to my daughter

      who turns her face from their grim task

      but I look, and my son looks too

      into the Beauty of Loulan

      preserved in our luminous blue

      glass capsule, with all the others—

      the Cherchen man, the toddler

      with a flat stone on each eye,

      the man sewn up with horsehair sutures

      at his slender neck. Microscopic views:

      white blood cells smeared across a slide

      stained with Giemsa dyes, methylene blue

      and azure A, B, C to show

      the chromosomal bands of dark

      and light. We watch this

      in the dim

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