Porochista Khakpour
A Complexion of the Mind
INSTANCES OF THE WORD “WHITE” IN SYLVIA PLATH’S POETRY
Remembers how white they were.
For thirty years, poor and white,
Dead white.
White
Whitely, discreetly,
At the white, tight
Six sided, white
Straw mats, white walls
To this white bone;
A white skull,
In the whitehot noon :
Stunned in marrow. Men in white
Radiation turned it white
In the white hiatus of winter—
The desert is white as a blind man’s eye,
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
Where it drives in, white and black,
Tell now, we taunt where black or white begins
Of white and black
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.
The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely.
The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet.
Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
Cast a round white shadow in their dying.
A pigeon rudders down. It’s fantail’s white
White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
Berries redden. A body of whiteness
I smell that whiteness here, beneath the stones
Death may whiten in sun or out of it.
Death whitens in the egg and out of it.
I can see no color for this whiteness.
White: it is a complexion of the mind.
I tire, imagining white Niagaras
Among the socketed white stars, your face
Of candor pares white flesh to the white bone,
White-bearded, weary. The berries purple
And bleed. The white stomach may ripen yet.
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I wear white cuffs, I bow.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Hefting his white pillar with the light
The hills step off into whiteness.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
The white-smocked boys started working.
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
You are so white, suddenly. And I said nothing.
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
I remember a white, cold wing
I wasn’t ready. The white clouds rearing
How white these sheets are. The faces have no features.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
He is still swaddled in white bands.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself—
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Eyes rolled by white sticks,
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
White towers of Smithfield ahead,
With white frost gone
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
Shining gloves and white suit.
The white hive is snug as a virgin,
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished,
why am I cold.
Her face is red and white, a panic,
Hard and apart and white.
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
A white mist is going up.
White Nike,
Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
Even the newts are white,
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
White with pink flowers on it,
And here the square of white linen
Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn’t help but notice
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead-
The white gape of his mind was the real Tabula Rasa.
white daisy wheels and
Haggard through the hot white noon.
O white sea-crockery,
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
And I am a white ship hooting: Goodbye, goodbye.
Porochista Khakpour was born Tehran in 1978 and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. She is the author of The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury) and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove/Atlantic). Her memoir Sick is forthcoming in 2017. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, Bookforum, Al Jazeera America, Vice, GQ, The Paris Review Daily, Elle, Spin, Slate, Salon, Poets and Writers, The Rumpus, Guernica, among others. Currently she is the Writer in Residence at Bard College.