1 : PAX ATOMICA
he creases at the dimple, growing very
slowly—
her motor skills are sharp, palms white
from a lifetime of shade—
when the essence of his open
mouth is forward, she combs herself and bows
before the joke—and it is she, not he, who,
traversed by glee, brandishes the horn until
the wave goes on, rising contorted in her seat
at the itch to wager something.
if he were stronger and had longer hair, his loud
mouth would overshoot completely, heating up the
coil and earning money. but he is stigmatized,
in the shade, like a tree ripping up the sidewalk,
his broad trunk flat enough to balance on.
she watches him wander in and out her
boding bed, hewed and raised for herbs
and rhododendrons. he passes in the jungle.
he dedicates a crater on the base molding.
tricked into a lesson, he totters at the threshold of sight,
brittle and undone. he opens up his jaw
to smile, the leather of his face molts and reverts
to trundle.
he is a dot, he is a crushed velvet puppet,
he is a stemmed glass on the dining table.
he will die standing up, and fall over
in the dust. he will not be judged,
he will roam the shady fields long after the
jungle has gone silent. there’s a terrible
dedication in the area, the total rose authority
dormant on the worthless black inscription. the
dyer-forms, eroded in the grotto, put many blessings
in the water of the caves.
the dressing brokes
no range; beneath it is a ruddy scoundrel,
staring at the wall. as brittle as a diagram,
there is no value giving it a form. he is the
autumn of the Middle Ages, leaves raked into
a pile.
like the winged forms discernible outside the
cave, he is a scar, a cavity stuffed with
rice. they can barely be discerned within the
static. without him, there is everything;
with him, there are private parts dotted on the
form, the white crescent of a fingernail.
he is a pebble in the shoe of God. he is a
scarecrow in the Asphodel Fields. I love him.
the meek will take the billowing shape of sheep’s
wool, cavorting like a silver streak upon the
surf; the mute shall inherit the earth.
all grain grows for you. if I had everything,
I would give it to you and maybe then
you would be big. I create you. you look alone.
2 : HUT 1
television dengue oboe,
bone fragment zither powder,
firelight shifting on the ceiling, a wool slipper,
talisman for the hermit’s home, bored into the
sacred mountainside, bored into the winged
figure’s eyes and heart.
order will be the inheritor of this,
she said, imitating the arc of an arrow in a
flowchart.
when the fire passes, the truss will stand and
so the grove. neither will have fruit.
seed will drop, naked, straight into the earth,
and with her arm outstretched, she dragged her
fingers over the horizon,
closing in her fist
the stone mountain, towering in the plain.
at the outset, the freight draped, redounding,
putting in a pillow all of this.
there was no rope, there was Hedda Gabler.
hut constructed on the riverside,
she failed and puckered up her lips.
everything had meaning, sickness and size
the mosquitoes covered her fail
the evil of her own lips covered her.
the windows had no glass, rainbow trout barreled
past the shack. anger had no home there.
she was severed like a ribbon, restitution
made her glad and a wimple.
Jocasta in the grotto. everything was static
and the forms were of her own desire,
doubled in the cavern water, they were bound
to be cupped in her, a wave of steam helming her ahead.
there were no wings, she heard the heartbeat
of the sawhorse strip-razing the phenomenon.
this note will be disallied, its scribble wending
to the separate place
to warn the thread.
between each tooth there is a thin black line,
a picket fence, a virus,
a hunk of language to displode into the
royal pulse.
because the sea is always self-disglutting,
putting itself out and never was.
the Trojan jail dangles up ahead, she dives
towards it, disgorges into the flux.
broker up the tide and then disseminate,
the menaces of real blessing falter at the mess of wind.
the figures groan and disburse their wings,
the feathers rush into the atmosphere as jazz,
and nothing is discernible.
she palms the fuse—
it’s the talisman, a gob of words,
a signal of the rot.
he does not dissolve—
trusting and adroit, the talisman
is open to a fashion,
a bit of stuff the breeze cannot displace.
she’s dedicated to the drummer boy, to
destruction of the fragment.
3 : BROOM PLACEMENTS
The house is empty,
but a set of teeth glowers in the corner,
spoonfed dithyramb,
rake translating thru the atmosphere.
Behind the manor,
the kids wind together
twigs into a cross.
This building can't be built much taller—
secern a prairie road where
the talisman comes apart in your pocket,
eroded by a worried hand.
Even at the end there
will be shoots and saplings, lifted up
by twine. There will be roadside markers
splintered in the mulch. A special hunk of words
describing who lies here beneath, and the distance
to the nearest city.
She can see broom placements, why hair
burning smells that way. In the empty yard,
the broom glowers by the baseboard,
a crater in the dairy pen.
A downstairs concession,
a reason to turn on the light,
a rocky hillock in the distance
marking where they'll turn around.
4/Postscript : INDEX
It’s strawberry fields forever,
a hectare of stucco. Elisabeth, selvage edge,
the silver and the lilies pale in the ceremony,
the firepoker ashen white,
and nanny cross behind the screen.
Everything I have now is this one poem, a list of objects. I can name everything, because you are fragile everything. Roller coaster, biker gang, dustbin, solution, starry night. I can’t write his name, it is so secret, the bright red stitching on a baseball. I have memories, too, of real things, hitting my mom in the nose with a baseball. She fell to her knees, bleeding, I ran over to her, she looked up with her hand to her face and said, never do that to anybody else. Today I wept at church, and folded my arms across my chest. Nothing, this is nothing. Stainless steel whisk, pinwheel, compact disk, restaurant. Hemorrhoid, rodeo, able body, Komodo dragon. Isobel, area, mendicant, warbler, guessing game, difference, Ohio, porcelain, decadence, chlorine, dipper, effort, porno, reference, wingding, bludgeon, balcony, titan, bacon, Easter, leopard, washcloth, distance, echo, ambulance, oven, accent, interior, adventure, icicle, revenge, diary, estuary, Draino, party popper, sponge bath, basalt, consulate, reminiscence, fort, half, weight, cyclone, operator, Best Buy, idiolect, dependency, experience, crossbones, servant, edge, licorice, surprise, gecko, spiral, rest, toaster, diffidence, special, sled dog.
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