>2 :
An Anthology of Collaborations
SECTION ONE
Mary Rising Higgins and George Kalamaras
Who Feed Their Leaves
Asphalt howl sunblinds
Route 66 brakeride west
Heartnerve, wordsway mum
I was busy looking up
My blame as spilled into sky
Signature heat swim
Heartbrain beats in utero
Closedcurve space earth strings
Protozoan gentle tongue
God, not more geography!
Big Bang launch squares off
Before a past begins to
Flow time inventing
Said, fly on the carving knife
Mask the moan, the terrible
Local gravity
Freefalls clockpulse neon wake
Sered foothills blueshift
Ester of terrible leaves
Salty salty dusk I might
No one’s asked me
To tell how the psyche folds
Plaits found tape circuits
This epsom dress zither me
Hand me the zebra finch bleed
From spin wound axis
If you come back might tell where
Star catch corridors
It takes me awhile to
Warm to the idea of fault
Bruise diva flaunt for
Carrion fly, flesh beetle
Pure corpse lilies bloom
Palmerworms injured fruit trees
It is I who feed their leaves
At centerstage arc
Fan ribbing foregrounds, fragments
Worldline timecurves groove
One shoulder about to slink
As if I bite a vowel
From road shoulder halt
Workout mode survive thrall paints
Flyover speedscuff
Show me your tongue, the rampike
I could, if I want, be that
Hunger browse retails
Mall air sting—high dark musk note
For Sale signs gird
Okay, while, therefore, perhaps
Words, she said, palladium
Dustpurls volt balance
Remote current switches right
Left, we’ll dance ear struck
Please excuse my any-such
Lamellate me, make me need
Black moat pawn sets out
Rackskin drawn up as sail
Loss, gain : net forces
A gravel rakes through my chest
Nothing as distinct as a
Build upon what is
Known’s fantail dancebond refract
Reed flex shift distills
Having certain attributes
We somehow manage to live
CD bassbeats dose
Graffiti rap streetdrop tools
Kickback weekends hood
We evaded eviction
Even Eurydice swelled
Matter, yes, nothing
Infinite modes depict one
Body of zero
The last word in the big book
Is not acute zygosis
To see what is there
What is there reflects ravels
Reflect ravels what is there
What is there ravel reflects
What there is reflects ravel
Reflects ravel what is there
What there is reflects raveling
Reflecting what is there ravels
There ravels what is reflecting
What is reflecting there ravels
Ravel reflecting what there is
Reflecting ravels what is there
There is ravels what’s reflecting
There is what ravel reflected
What is raveling reflects there
Ravel what is there reflecting
Reflect what is there raveling
Reflected what is there ravels
Highspeed e–pause flips
Love carves to active detach
How much : just so : moves amazed
If I had a name
I would ask it to name me
Surely it would glow
Absorb, release box-tuned light
Harmonic dissonance joules
Fish wrapped in newsprint
So, the Chinese blood pheasant
Another thing’s thing
Blue-belled field, trenches mine
Patterned hunger seeds, entrains
So comes the word so Bite my nipple here
It’s the Zen Buddhist cliché Say the constant sorrow
Everything’s simple Use the word forgive
Tangible, intangible Ineffable rivers drive
Self gapping catchstreams meshwork Identity whitewaters
Please accept my lice
I give them only respect
Brahms-bed my sore mouth
Special relative scales
Marine heat jouled, egressing
Whenever I strip
I feel alive as eel fire
Mammalian my tongue
The virtual year>2ns, observes
Biofeed binge hitchcrave aches
Tie my mouth with sphinx Heretofore and hence;
Ask me the marry true north However; because; although;
Slip-soap the word to Great good fortunate
Along a River Vagus Birds of Paradise, vase cut,
Breathblood worldshores floodgates branch Bow to high red Torch Ginger
No precious pretense
of oriental insights
but perhaps stretching
Nowcurrent scat jams echo
That-was-then-what’s-now-then-what
Please hand me the pears
I’m thinking of the Congo
Hand me, yes, cut hands
Rely upon its own sake
Simplicity falls back to
Strip nomadic bees
From this brazier of breathing
Dissolve my disperse
In vogue revelations bell
Gong centers resonate, rim
Love Simone’s third name
The one that’s rising through me
Saying, die die die
Ads everywhere read as if
Bright confetti defines her
I might the word stink
It would be an urge I’d breathe
Fierce suppers of straw
Green-gold-red rivers arrow
Orange barricades current bent
I’ve never written
I never renku nor risk
If you will my spleen
Properties of extreme break
Open at vanishing fields
Forgive my spasm
Cut away all muck and much
Coffee mug my heart
Sand shapes from retelling’s frame
War as red kiss, as orchids
*****
Collaboration for “Who Feed Their Leaves” began in September 2005, when Mary Rising Higgins emailed George Kalamaras asking him to participate in a blind chance haiku exchange with her. She’d just finished reading his Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair (Quale Press, 2004) and wanted to learn more about his “marvelous” (in the surreal sense) use of language while creating a “real renku” for an R poem she was writing. Mining chance operations from Surrealism, in the spirit of Breton, Desnos, Eluard, et al., was of particular interest to George; extending discontinuity, parataxis, and what Bruce Andrews calls “the theater of between”—despite narrow precise limits—was of particular interest to Mary. They agreed to exchange, cut up, and draw sequences to create haiku combinations. Their procedures included meditative attention and accepting chance combinations. The 30 renku links developed gradually during the course of nearly a year that went in many directions for them both. In May 2006, they completed the collaboration with a more organic revision that attended to each syllable. The experience proved to be informing and rich for both writers. The authors thank Sugar Mule for giving “Who Feed Their Leaves” an opportunity to be read.
MRH & GK
Maria Damon and mIEKAL aND
eros/ion
[A dark blue dress] rises from the cold frost fields, apprehended dimly. In a cold season of wakened witchery, [dark hands] make difference among its folds, hope is the same as grief. I am reminded that I fashion my own openings by the dreams that own me. There are so many, how do I choose?
[dark hands]
Once [5 rivers ago] my hands didn't belong next to his heart, yet I put them close by because I could not resist the thrashing desire of not having him within my grasp... & could anything matter as much as the [guilt] that observed my every urge. My hands that would fold sheets of rice-paper late into the night into irregular accordion books, stories that would never be remembered until the vagrant text came to settle by my pillow, some thirty years later.
[a dark blue dress]
Taking it off the first time, [the mirror hidden], the curtains drawn over the windows. Him, walking down the hall, slow footsteps of anticipation, the dress will never fit the same again. How do I understand the feel of the fabric, [having never touched the body] the dress borders upon, the sacred integument in which godhead is revealed and concealed.
[The mirror hidden]
from view, from the ordinary pleasure of watching yourself touch soft & feel open. In many ways you & I have been interchangeable in this yet-to-be-realized life of passion, [lipsticking discrete signs] of the unattainable in the attic behind the mirror, where no one can see [the anxious graffiti you call obsession]. The slightest scent of a subtext, and i lose my bearings.
[the anxious graffiti you call obsession]
It was all the same poem three years long and it was all for you; as the poem moved over time you became the prima causa, so good to me, so kind to indulge my fantasy, in your [absentia mystica] i became a thin shimmer of yearning, a pure surface of hurt too beautiful to look at straight, a [jewel hollowed] of presence. I saw myself as crown to your throne, a deluded Narcissa.
[jewel hollowed]
A glyph that is, i was myself yes a jewel encrypted in a jewel, hollowed by writing, carving your story in my hollow wooden amulet (shaped like a pear) with a burning needle. Journals and diaries were too heavy, my body too heavy, I wanted my body to be all [air], pure space inside this dark bluegreen dress, materializing into flesh woman presence only for your pleasure. Most of the scriptings I threw away, never thinking i would need them now.
[air]
The way he looked leaping up to catch a [fire in the ultimate] game. Darkness and pallor, that is who you were to me, a leaping cold fire in the blaze of night.
[fire in the ultimate]
When the Unnameable came to me as a young shepherd boy he had your aspect, i wrote him into my articulable experience, my text, the one i parade to the world as Story. But, as i'd forgotten you, could it have been the true text? In that vision, the shepherd took my hand and we lay down by the still waters, where i let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. His left hand was under my head, and his right hand did embrace me. I gave the dress away during those years, but it came back to my closet unobtrusively.
[absentia mystica]
Remember [the first time he was about to give himself to you]. The eerie sonore concrèt panning from one side of the room to the other, not to be understood until much later, after he was found out, & you, [walking the lake edge], dispose your hesitations. By example, [I follow suit] in the next available moment.
[walking the lake edge]
A wom/n's tors/, "surgically disarticulat//," cam/ to view in horrif// detai/... sord// matter of murde/, th/ unio/ derelic/ and beref/, later disprov// to be hers... wash// up at remot/ shor////
[I follow suit]
There is a place I can go early in the morning, before waking to the day. Quiet, discreet, & for the moment troubled by what refuses to manifest. This is [an objective discourse I have with myself], run-on for years with no conclusions. At some point all the paint will have peeled from the house, old weathered siding [exposing] the original grain. Why paint over it?
[exposing]
Friendship of bell and light, of night and dark bright pool, of moon and bed. A shiver so thinned down it slices my heart to grief-pieces. "The nature of my betrayal has always been a source of shame to me, even after making amends." Because i don't understand why i betray, over and over. ...ghost of a child i saw/ inside you ... someone i cd hurt when most i needed you.
[an objective discourse I have with myself]
Every day i have a different self to compare to the person i was when i was in love with him, now years ago. Am i allowed to use your name here mIEKAL? In friendship's name, this is what keeps me going. that he has come back into my life, even mediated by the tabloids and the horrific sensationalism around the case, gives me reason to live.
[the first time he was about to give himself to you]
was in a seedy townhouse in the New Ilium mysteriously empty. For many years afterwards i endowed that moment with spiritual attributes how thoughtful my prose here when i would say the erotic password that would bring him back murder and all and yes would be the word for the rest of time, for the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.
[lipsticking discrete signs]
Some years later I visited those markings quite by chance, on the prowl for your dark blue dress which you had carefully packed away in a battered steamer-trunk. [Initials I couldn't read], hearts flattened by broken passions, tic marks of how many times his face appeared in your dreams & the twining red lines that connected them all together.
[initials I couldn't read]
Not because of legibility, but because I couldn't identify what language the characters were derived from. The initials looked indo-european, but not contemporary, much closer to ancient Hittite, deliberately drawn. Prhps thy wrnt ntls t ll. Prhps thy wr nvctns f bsssn trnsmttd crss cntrs bt dnt sk hw thy gt thr.[*]
[*]
Perhaps they weren't initials at all. Perhaps they were invocations of obsession transmitted across centuries, but don't ask how they got there.
[having never touched the body]
For years berated herself, she had been too passive, she had not been right. Never not never let him do. She wrote, just a young girl: "For the [prologue of my book]/ I had to pretend I'd resolved you in myself/It seems now like a dirty trick." But let him raise the dress [over her shoulders], her arms. In her remembered feeling-vision, nothing could compare.
[over her shoulders]
& above the window. The right ordering of the lovers from my past. But they are all there, always, never less than, always waiting for me to change. The present can be worthy, but not in time to alter the past. Explicit text betrays our uniformity to a predictable occurrence of behaviors. You, beside me there, who you might be. There, in the clefts of the rock, in the secrets of the stairs.
[5 rivers ago]
and as many oceans, hidden in the prose-word in his heart. He was the word "[kinetic]" as his knees bent he was the word "[grove]" as his black hair traced its lineaments of desire on her breast he was the word "[black river]" as it wounded him to be near her, in the garden bed of spices.
[kinetic]
Does all love ultimately lead to practicing departure. For years, ever since reading The Pleasure of the Text, I have been [unable to write of love], love of –to confront the impracticality of using words & text as well as [Barthes]. Desiring instead to [populate the literature] with my own specie of text & stay out of the path of what is best said by someone else.
[unable to write of love]
"They're coming at you, aren't they?" "Compared to the others it was a cinch." "Brought it this far, might as well finish." "Throwing caution to the wind, live every moment...." She said. He said. He said. He said. I soberly register this entry into our pleasureTEXT.
[Barthes]
And for me not Barthes but his anagram –'s breath –is master text, the sacred cloth joining inside and outside, clasped by a jeweled belt, being the garment that i wore or wove for him at the moment when Isis was to be unveiled. drawing into and from myself the hand that writes the twinned lines of blood and ink. Far from being a bundle of abject rags, the dress is still pristine and hides her secrets behind the quilted breast-piece.
[populate the literature]
Pain is redundant, who has time for it? It's not a matter of how long the recall flummers my heart. Possibility gauges a persuasion of micro-literatures bound by the locality of your habits as well the sonority every word speaks through. Properly encouraged text becomes [abundant] & what we hear matches what we read. Propulous mind, empty mind.
[abundant]
The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines are tender with fragrant grapes. Saffron, calamus and cinnamon all rejoice in this union, though it is purely imaginary. If all other scraptures were to die, to drown or burn in conflagration, to freeze in the steppes of unknown wilderness where no light comes, this would still be the holy of holies, and the earthly flame would leap to catch and be subsumed into the heaven-beings of light.
[grove]
chased her thru the night of trees, care free, free of restraint, the wild play before poetry corrupts the ambiguity, the lessness in young male wanderlust. To have you his way; to have you my way. There remains much to know about cock & spleen, its devilish trust in an [Other theatre of love]. These are cycles, this pain & release. Yet some habits of pain are not not meant to torment /us.
[Other theatre of love]
Act 1: Choose a lover over internet from the opposite side of the planet.
Act 2: [Use only the truth to seduce].
Act 3: Arrange to meet in a place that neither of you have visited.
Act 4: [Without speaking], without obligation, enter the Other.
Act 5: [Discontinue contact].
[Use only the truth to seduce]
This is the days of year when events happen far too quickly. & Now is the day of days we leap across. I keep my secrets in a car that doesn't drive in reverse. Or are these memories without recall, imagined to be squirreled away, unshareable. If you happen to be thumbing thru your envelope collection, do not look for them there.
[without speaking]
Hum (mum) & hum (mum) again. [Holding your breath]? Let it out. Somewhere (surrounded by books) the exuberance, notable squalls. The intelligence therein. Words (why, why, why) that won't speak. Minus any opportunity (too close is too close). Grab her (the author in her role as teacher) a taxi on Broadway Avenue in any city in the US. & (mumBLE) to myself (journalless). "Hanging in." "There."
[Holding your breath]
Incantatory buzzing, the cracked bell sounds and the friends are all hovering around, anxious for my welfare. What was it i meant to say? It's gone into that red/black world that rocked with the movement of waves. The sacred union took place at 2000 feet above the cold ocean, before the bride was bled and fell, and her bed was rocks and brine, and her hair was matted dark matter –webbed with garlands of seaweed and harsh twine, and this is not at all what i meant to say, but she the storm won't let me forget that other part of the story.
[Discontinue contact]
Venus's father died cursing her for loving you. We heard him, much weakened near the end of his life, hobbling on his crutches to the door of his hell bedroom which he slammed shut in loud exhortation of disgust. on my two doors down bed, we froze in our paradise embrace, knowing the rage was directed at us. Shortly after that he died, and contact was indeed discontinued. “When Zeus is thwarted, lightning strikes.”
[black river]
or kara çay in Turkish, having the double meaning of black river or black tea. In the morning, before poesy had the momentum to wake, all flows darkly away, her [secrets bitter as old tea], the very taste of the [inexpressible flooding] the sex of her arousal. The tea flows thru, one café at a time. Where i go, looking for my beloved through pane after pane of storefront.
[inexpressible flooding]
One dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy [House of Desire]. I don't know how it was –but with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable, for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me –upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain –upon the bleak walls –upon the vacant eye-like windows –upon a few rank sedges –and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees –with an utter depression of soul, which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly that to the after-dream of the reveller upon sexual addiction –the bitter lapse into everyday life –the hideous dropping of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart –an unredeemed dreariness of thought, which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom and eros/ion I now proposed to sojourn for some weeks. Its proprietor, Robert le Poirier, had been one of my boon companions, nay, the first love of my youth; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. News had reached me in a distant part of the country –an obscure paragraph buried in a widely circulated journal –which, in its wildly disturbing nature, had admitted of no other than a visit to the vacated site of Desire. Although in our youth we had been even intimate, I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had always been excessive and habitual.
[House of Desire]
Desire
runs too fast
she jumps
too high
she falls
too strong
it hurts
her leg is broken
she doesn't cry
Desire
runs too fast
she jumps
too high
she falls
a part
it hurts
her heart is broken
too fast
too high
too deep
her sadness
killed her
nobody cried
after all she was a cat,
a cat named Desire
(by Sujen Dinçer)
[inexpressible flooding]
I dreamed I entered the House of Desire and it sheltered a fecund, sun-filled atrium full of pomegranate, olive and fig trees and of course pear trees after his [Name]. A sublime dalliance with a love supreme takes place in this Song of Songs which is a garden, for he is the fairest and darkest, the most profound and the sweetest, the most accessible and the most unreachable, the sound and taste most constantly on my lips and the most ineffable and impalpable. We lie down in the green pasture and slip off the wedding garments, silver bracelets, red veils and all, and give the gifts of stone, feather, bone, pen and gold. [The fountain] in the center of the atrium plays its celestial spray in micromusics culminating culminating never culminating but circular in blissrounds coruscating over mica and marble in a scintillate texture of shimmered eros.
[The fountain]
You cupped your indescribable hand in the pool of the fountain and drew it back filled with cool water. This you trickled on my open body, between breasts down to low belly, and rubbed barely tracing, a touch so light it called on all of me to express delight through silence, all of my being was centered on the movement of your fingers, and followed the meeting of skin on skin through infinitely nuanced raptures of friction and tickling. Mon coeur un luth suspendu (sitôt qu'on le touche il resonne). That the body could be a source of pleasure was a revelation that stopped all passage of time.
[Name]
"comes dark matter, ghost-skein of things, all things virtual, in this and all possible worlds, the propriety of assignment in dialectic with what is observed as the real, the process of the proper name its continuous in-stantiation. [ghosts hanging on to ghosts], we are all of the imaginary, the symbolic nothing more than temporary stasis. look closely and see through all of this, the names disappearing, returning to the matter of the world."
[ghosts hanging on to ghosts]
Hanging onto births being free of. Being free of translates readily into [effluvia]. Essence looks remarkably similar to essential. The material of is embodied in how we remember ourselves during deep sleep. Some discourse refutes the inexpressible, the [lover's discourse] is based upon what cannot be put into words. What we call life happens despite of & on to. Begin here to dissemble the order of my thoughts & the choice of words.
[effluvia]
No end of pleasure-rivers, the flow burst from under ground, and the moss goddess was born. Who i became in your hands there was no going back. Gold flecks punctuated the flood in diamond motility and what i stopped in real life went on and on in memoria aeterna, passion wended back under the rock bridge and took up with the subterraines, wound round and round my heart a river turned into a snake ate my heart to protect it.
[lover's discourse]
Night is incomparably expansive, an endless volupté. pleasure-river creeps between the pages and pulls them up over her head. When you left for a moment i slipped my dress back on, not because i didn't want you but because you were away too long. This you misread. There is no way to explain this, thirty years later when you are under house arrest.
[secrets bitter as old tea]
I've an image of a seaside cafe where the tea is served in ornate red glassware. We are surrounded by orchards of figs, pomegranates & olives. As we walk away from the table, an inquisitive waitress reads the tea leaves to herself, "Unprovoked, the future will continue much as before. ...provocation bundles surprise with challenges & events never reveal themselves in linear fashion..."
[guilt]
for having denied him, she wrote, "When i think of b, il me semble que je suis un bâteau qui est coupé d'abrit et qui err sur l'océan sans direction. Je sais qu'il y a de la terre quelque part, mais si je m'y trouverais, ce serait complètement par hazard. Je ne sais pas que faire," and folded it into an accordion book pressed between leaves of her mourning dress. Still a young girl. Savoir tout, c'est la mort, was what [she learned] that year.
[she learned]
Also learned was "parole pleine, parole vide." Quand j'étais avec lui, c'était "parole pleine." Depuis que mon père est mort, c'est toujours "parole vide." J'oublis comment dire "meaning." Est-ce le même mot que "feeling." There is "langue" and there is "parole." One is flat like spit on a forked tongue, the other rolls into you and takes you over from the inside out, it is the jeweled apple of desire. She was a child learning lessons that she didn't need any more.
[prologue of my book]
This is the life I want to live when you set me free, if only you drive me to act in ways I have yet to accept. [Many years from now I will write a subsequent story], every word your words as if you had the spleen to say them [when I am beside you]. Only much later you are all but forgotten as one of many desire-bodies in this mysterious flux I call [my life]. My attraction is propulsive, emanating from the faith each moment creates. Dancing alone, submitting to what chance will bestow.
[my life]
One wonders who is writing this story. Is purity of narration to be achieved by identifying myself with only that which is male, or might the play of transgression possess an uncircumscribed realm for true fictive experience. That said, I would rarely write about my relationships, failed or otherwise, in my journal.
[Many years from now I will write a subsequent story]
and like all stories it will be the imprint of a thorny crown on paper flesh. "How does it feel" was an anthem back then. How does it feel. It feels electricity. It feels energy. How does it feel to find out that the man who made you want to live killed the one he [loved best]?
[when I am beside you]
As you did once before in the flesh took me into [stop-gap midnight]. Was all blue-black depth, was memor of rhodochrosite sunset into a dark redolence of touchtaste. Was long slender fingers no harm tremor my arms as the dress slides off.
[stop-gap midnight]
Cracked open by desire, the silken skin that had hardened into a cocoon split and was discarded. The old poet is disappearing so a new poet can emerge. There was a wonderful friendly generosity between you, never forget that space that permits the imagination to move under the garment in sensual suggestion. The thorn comes home to the crown; the torn flesh heals from its incisive inscription into writing; the scar tissue is the text that must be approached with great tact, and touched with tender nuance.
[loved best]
and you were my reason for living
and you were my reason for living
you were gone before i learned to call your name
Eros/ion is a self-eroding, unstable cenotaph, an exorcism and a love-poem, as love itself disappears by natural processes of decay, erosion, and circumstance, as well as by unnatural processes of violence. MD/ma
The following is a short statement about writing:
MISSING TEXT
Bird tracks began the communication routine. If recorded prehistory immobilized modernity & stepped out of line.... I have heard all of this before. A book located in a ready-made symbol, identified by a bibliography of waking no more than one anagram puzzled the remaining civilization. Talk around but not inside. The subject he wore was a thread-bare suitcase. The complaint rained paper onto a harlot garden. Tho invisible, walls were erected as mnemonic devices by decree of the commune. Writing survived the character by virtue of predatory extinction. In the center of the book was the eye of the hurricane—the paraphrase. Certain fleeting symbols held as vocation separated by an apparatus of misconduct. Some aspects of the interglacial have come full circle. ma
Natalie Basinski and Michael Basinski
Is My
ideas I am many purses
milkweed deals with women or words I
I am in highly over ordered liquids
And Sisters Weird And And
young women trapped and limited by the multiple
demented, demanding social wo
I
cake or roles. I am not
I
explode images of young inquisitions
their future and hence
*****
Collaboration is a direct form of derivation. Hence, ultra-quickly, we quickly enter the grand continuum of art.
NB/MB
Robert Garlitz and Rupert Loydell
from ABANDONED STORIES
WIRED
Arcade lights, triangles, deltas or pure line
squares - lights splayed, tubed, spread flat, bound,
bundled: however I try to package light
I never can charge the wires enough.
However wired I am [green haze drifting]
mind goes stain-glass, shatters into prism.
Might have been a sacred window blown,
certainly was a sacred vision gone now
into dark questions ascending. Throw me into
a tank of water, film me rising
and sinking. Ok, Viola has already done
what is to be done, but Flavin's
fluorescence lights the way ahead. I fall
through those pale violet portals - well, I
would if I didn't also see the
tubes making light of my desire to
fall into some veiley hovering light sublime.
NO IDEA
Split the earth to get triple vision,
divide the sky to get unified sight.
Your inner fire, a single bar heater,
burns and scalds inside. This life hurts
your skin. Transpose it onto a fan
of pages. Flesh become paper can then
be drawn on, crumpled up and discarded.
The faint blue numbers and other scars
suggest worlds beyond neatly combed hair
made stiff by gel. Dressing the part won't
fool anyone; parting the dress won't work
beyond the initial surprise. The soft glow
against the firelight, dark rose leather binding,
warm book against the hand, cold ink
unread in front of you, mind distracted
by this strange pause that has gripped
the world. No idea what silence awaits.
SECRET PAIN
Sci-fi diagrams, full shadow assembly required:
trace figures against green-gold screen; assume
multiple cuts and angles will keep parts
where they should be. Part 13 slots
into 15, but 14 is superfluous, only
there for decoration. You will need to
scrap your need for feelings, these diagrams
include no emotive components. Keep edges clean
and your blade sharp. Take no prisoners.
When you have put your life together
consider the lilies, walk the field
in moonlight, see how you have not
had to deal with the shifting universe
and all its complexities. Celebrate the silliness
of everyday existence, move at breakneck speed.
Yet again, the banal beauty of it all
will make us wince in secret pain.
DISCONTENT
Color-coded junction, slow interchange. Untoward stripes
and dry brush of day. Envy is
a disease, a square of vibrant green.
Purple stripes against black indicate the time
for elegy has passed. Gutenberg lives yet
while envy turns into pride and lust.
Our disease is a shorthand for coincidence.
Events gather in nodes and clusters, drawn
together by design. We are all envious
of the man in the blue shirt
who walks this way, smiling, content, sure.
He disappears into the distance with such
conviction. Then all there is is sunlight
on the stunted trees, our suburban lawn.
We want more than this sun and
vagrant grass. What if it were impossible?
Could we be still ourselves, not wanting?
GEAR CITY
Nature's secret machinery turned you on your
head, broke down, burst forth, bled injury.
Sprockets, vessels, gears, branches twisted against themselves
and all we could do was point
and hope the city noticed that things
weren't as they might be. The engineer
suggested we plant memorial trees, real blossoms
reminding us of unreal loss. The gardener
urged we encircle the trees with iron
to make them secure. The bombs uprooted
everything and made us nervous. Next day
Sheila gathered what pieces she could find,
arranged them on a wallsized frame
and painted the whole thing Mars Black.
Marvellous! Blend in with what's burnt, charcoal
against charcoal, cinder against cinder. It upstages
everything else in the city of night.
INVISIBLE FUSIONS
Yellow on top, blue at bottom, gradations between,
chart becomes wheel, wheel spins under snow,
light looks for another garden ready for
minimalists all trying to 'paint the light' by
painting icy blues and whites. Here, however,
are fires and fusions, buds and blossoms,
lilac, rhododendron, pink, white, fuschia, dutch blue
iris, mountain lupine, hadean purple-blue flame.
Roses, like snow, wait. Grandeur can slight
anyone who prefers to be offended; sight
lines come and go like morning frost.
Soon we will master personal ambient color
and throw it around ourselves like clothes,
choosing from this bright rainbow of hues
that hangs in the air awaiting decisions.
The future is mostly memory waiting to
happen, an invisible spectrum of possible incidents.
John M. Bennett and Jim Leftwich
Clank
cusp an door an lift an lot an lump an loot an
pest an lump an lawn an blast an crush an plot an
crock an quick an loan an lewd an led an leap an
wink an bloat an squid an egg an c rock an cut an
crush an quack an lung an lead an lore an lop an
lock an crust an dunk an gland an crimp an botch an
crotch an crump an land an lunk an lust an lick an
flop an score an bread an tongue an quick an flush an
cuke an crack an leg an lid an load an linker an
lope an lode an few an moan an flick an flock an
cot an crash an last an law an lamp an less an
scoot an trump an slot an rift an deer an cups
Clue
pork an pot an puke an pencil an clung an clock an
bone an shawl an joints an flops an blinker an fester an
phew an pud an pock an post an crag an cram an
some an cot an poem an miles an lunge an slick an
pelt an pest an porn an pod an crumb an crud an
sod an boss an slants an skunk an truck an sun an
pun an pluck an plunk an pants an cross an cod an
mud an plumb an god an corn an nest an felt an
prick an plunge an pile an poem an cat an cum an
slam an rug an ghost an stock an suds an flew an
pester an pinker an plops an points an crawl an cone an
flock an rung an pensive an poke an clot an park
Shoe
shoe seep your stopping clad spent
bunt sock toiling our dope toe
shoe creep your boiling crack went
scents lock fielding our sleep toe
shoe beep your folding lack sent
want crock bailing our crop toe
shoe deep your oiling sack bent
spins clod shopping our soap toe
Shoot
shoot and shape and slob and slow
mister and flop and hut and loot
hump and hoot and hole and heap
home and old and bought and stone
oil and only and oink and off
if and point and lonely and soil
one and ought and odd and om
deep and whole and moot and dump
toot and tut and top and twister
blow and blob and grape and coot
SO
so lump boot roll he loops
ends we loose duke dink glow
so stomp flash soup he flees
turns we slump meat sham glow
so flap crust mote he fumes
crawls we wind bag mask glow
so task rag limb he falls
booms we smote bust slap glow
so clam beat stump he burns
pees we suit ass clomp glow
so slink fluke juice he blends
goops we loll moot chump glow
SUCH
such pole such tomb he seeps
hopes she cold sucks hash mush
such roast such pool he heaves
boils she haunt sucks fat mush
such launch such lunch he charms
grins she think sucks damp mush
such lamp such blink he trims
farms she hunch sucks haunch mush
such flat such jaunt he coils
leaves she tool sucks ghost mush
such lash such mode he loafs
creeps she boom sucks mole mush
SINCE
mold since bleach or palace mulch
hoot driller nor fussed wince whine
spoon since cane or cluster bank
face cramper nor time wince grope
bush since rice or fletcher clasp
flash feltcher nor mice wince rush
soap since lime or camper trace
hank buster nor name wince moon
wine since rust or filler loot
gulch phallus nor peach wince gold
Shocked
was shocked the shaper flame you throat
was frilled the reader weave you ore
was clapped the hooper dome you soak
was clasp the cornice wrack you bones
was break the dimmer hump you sod
was score the canter rug you soon
was pore the slanter thug you spoon
was tweak the simmer bump you nod
was rasp the corner slack you phones
was flapped the cooper tome you oak
was hilled the breader heave you sore
was flocked the sharper flume you float
Dim
dim yr nostril ham the thing
mail the lumber bunt you flail
run the cuspid gum you stun
fold the sooner crumb you sold
half the rapid clang you slab
hire the scamper torn you wire
hire the damper corn you fire
half the rancid fang you crab
fold the nooner thumb you mold
run the custard rum you spun
mail the slumber runt you nail
dim yr gnostic yam the wing
Chub
chub why chop why crashing in the splittax
ffuhlewot in the sprawling eye bolt why eat
rule why rug why smelting in the tubenail
gabknuhc in the lingering eye colt why melt
ash why ask why crouching in the bladenom
gnulhcnurc in the mailing eye snout why snort
port why pout why flailing in the crunchlung
monedalb in the slouching eye flask why clash
belt why bolt why fingering in the chunkbag
lianebut in the pelting eye bug why mule
meat why molt why sprawling in the towelhuff
xattilps in the bashing eye hop why club
Sog
sog what sank what trash and lemurs
sredlocs and minks what juice what cob
black what blank what crisp and stormers
srennuts and pinks what womb what knack
mist what mails what tusk and creamers
sretlep and clock what shrunk what busk
tusk what trunk what flock and pelters
sremaerc and musk what flails what gist
back what bomb what sinks and stunners
sremrots and wisp what plank what stack
slob what sluice what jinx and scolders
srumel and gnash what crank what bog
John Crouse and Jim Leftwich
ACT THREE THOUSAND EIGHTEEN
possum historian clothing: “traipse curly breath”
traipse fountains hour: “besides being grist”
besides symptoms discretion: “draft sleuth pluto”
draft one blade: “mouth zeal couth”
mouth speak mouth: “heal raft besides”
heal cup westerly: “auto trace ossia”
auto surround fowl: “sloth historical mountains”
sloth up emergency: “register systemic tones”
register out planet: “being peaks coup”
being increased orange: “breathes around cups”
breathes night setback: “curl doubts crease”
curl another childhood: “possum light another.”
ACT THREE THOUSAND NINETEEN
lucifer ownership blackboards: “facts empty lucifer”
corporation fireplace performer: “mere broth corporation”
unwound spirits railroad: “clear public unwound”
define abate destroy: “tones wheels define”
wheedle topple authorship: “find sound wheedle”
tonnage traditional corroborate: “ports lucid tonnage”
publicity indemnification liberty: “shapes fires publicity”
nuclear earthquake roundtable: “sprints about nuclear”
booth endurance stagecoach: “apples additional booth”
polymer swim genus: “fictions quake polymer”
peremptory celerity mythology: “during swarms peremptory”
acts overlook conclusions: “seal books acts.”
ACT THREE THOUSAND TWENTY
buoy dandelion rapprochement: “sacred rug cakewalk”
cordate lockjaw hebrides: “logs sere war”
injector gimcrack aground: “lions flock crocks”
warhead tethers songster: “danger scripts other”
seesaw dosage concordant: “soup ears belly”
cologne flog cashmere: “clash chords songs”
shrivel ranger strabismus: “around rides cement”
sluice proscribe esophagus: “fails soap rabid”
snowshoe motherland pratfall: “veins bread inception”
catwalknovena jelly: “weathers sage flags”
surrogate breath hearsay: “just dated toys”
sacrum perception couplet: “now juices ravel.”
*****
Statement relative to: "experience of creating"
much as motions: "initiated book to"
resolve unhand land: "each line enacted"
begs reaction getting: "it gives it"
back whats volleyeds: "up in the"
air over the: "colon as soon"
as passing thru: "quotes read or"
said net three: "words outstanding for"
completely incompleted anything: "compliments anything incompleted"
snags reactions backhands: "seizes amplifications teases"
redoubled faultlessness infinitely: "more than two"
weighs around its: "having balls falling"
unforeseen precisions and: "eating it too."
JC
Luke Kennard and Rupert M Loydell
The Last Morning
the last morning we choked on watermelon;
a familiar room suffers everyone.
sharp & incisive you could put out the stars,
intending to imitate the spittle and bronze of
a basic tongue but aphorisms won't wash.
hands over ears I'm yelling at you:
he had no proof of a second tundra.
adoptive compress nobody playing flute for the dogs on the street no time, the sacked agents twitch to the blam of the windbreaks, A friend of mine would like a word with you: 'The lumber of imprecation is no hazard to the way we should live our lives'. He left.
who shall I interrogate? memory is
a sordid prism splintered light.
Lord, be in my if not wholly there,
dropping stones to prove it gravity of doubt.
nil desperandum drudge lexicon:
I should introduce you accompany you
through the gulch ocean either side.
Dan Waber
and
Jennifer Hill-Kaucher
#1
I know of at least a hundred thousand
ways and mean means to disappear without
letting on that I'm fulfilled with doubts and
fears of the cost, the loss, the whole amount.
I've watched myself watching you do the same
with your own alike yet different hides;
words of colors, stitches, weavings away
of the torn and twisted scraps of your lies.
But lies is too wrong a word for our walk,
for the way we whisper the way we wish
the world to be. Better to say your fall,
the fall of nevereverending if.
Here are no eyes, no ears, no arms to grip;
merely my words which shuffle, stumble, slip.
#2
My dream ends are floating - deep
starkness that leads into day
where I shuffle words to leap.
Safety in these letters a way
to shroud what is meant. You say
loss and I think of wrappings
torn on the floor, a fallen holiday
of leaving. We should give in burlap
for the itch, cover ourselves plainly.
Do you see? There is no fabric
for this that doesn’t pull, isn’t vain
in a way that makes me static -
clinging to science or order
gravity finding me ungrounded.
#3
I read your words (past and present tenses
apply (do I dare say future tense, too?
(no, no, not yet, too soon (there are fences
(there are always fences (when there are two
people (it's their private territories
(in disparate need of demarcation
(graphite, charcoal, and ink scribbled stories
(they merely resemble desperation
(in the words (where there is no way to lie
(well, some try, but we both know better, yes?
(or have I assumed too much (stroke of thigh
(but I digress...unless...(yes, yes, confess
(I can't (not yet (please (wait (I will (tell (you
)))))))))))))))))))))))).
#4
I will tell you this: all is nothing
and nothing at all with boundaries
these places we live. We build wearing
stones, mortar, wood. To explore these
open-palmed, stripped skies mirrors
the living tree in November, pointing
upward, series of veins and fingers
just out of reach. Yes, appealing
it is to let go, peel. Underneath
what universe lies in our art and age?
Leaf by leaf the artichoke reveals
the filaments of her heart, caged
beast. Better in the buttering
Sweet - to taste without bitterness.
#5
stark white plate placed below conversation,
darkgreen thistle--buttered grilled turned, repeat;
aioli cup caps the presentation,
napkins crisply uncrease, a pause, he speaks:
"I hope you're not in a hurry tonight,"
then he smiles at both her and the platter.
they begin by turns, being barely polite,
eating around the heart of the matter.
garlic, butter, and the nut of the meat,
petals pulled reluctantly through their teeth,
sibilant sips lipsmack into sounds sweet,
patiently probing for what's underneath.
centered in the wreckage, exposed, luscious,
rests the tenderest answer, salacious.
#6
Look in on me and speak in pattern
unexpected, bright delight of vowels
rounded, the words with symbol matter.
I cannot read otherwise, the stark my eyes
refuse. Hear me chirping wildly bound in time
hopeless in movement and golden rules.
Order makes me stumble, crawl. A long climb
our music is, stanzas breaking and as a fool
I forget to breathe between the notes
and become dizzy, feel darkening dusk
rolling in the corners of the room, floating.
To break out of this body I may hush
like a blossom, lightly. Look in on me
and speak in song, canons so sweet.
#7
sin the hungered thou sand tear shove mmmeye _ife,
know won (redespite wishpered congyring
in the deap deark dove dizzy ire us ffflights),
tolled too mee tease whorlds--basking ami two sing.
whow due rivhers flow-t-t-t ifwhen
damns finale clash us under, oh pen
why'd with possibilitease and whenif?
eye can'tell yoooh sew mulch withis pen, oh
eye've scene whys and hows and whens and whats and
neverythink inbe tween inbe asked and
unanswerved, fall the wile weighting fore and
aft two bumble bee kneaded deep ply and
inconsidered cape able of l(if)t. your
weirds be the firstest witch h(us)h fear mmmm or
#8
I have wanted to let go of this pen
to loose the grip of fist around its vein
but it has the same on me, as all men
who dare to assume that I am not vain.
This is true, my face is not what it seems
and you will see this or already do -
Reflected in the cafe glass, gleams
of eyeframe, straight down to bone and marrow.
I want to laugh - and slurring fly with you
All that will escape from my mouth a hiss
thin and strained. These words still seem too few
and infrequent, but I can’t let it go.
What more will we have? Ink smudge stain on hands?
For center, pupil of eye, I wait the days.
#9
eye saw you (unabashedly) type cast
world for word (am a zing ly), sew no say
you a hiss (cruscendo) is just a hiss
(bogart, bergman, sam and piano sway)
let me flay it all ought fore you, slur girl:
your thin strained hiss iss a steam engine's seams,
burr sting to oh pen the gaits...this allll seems,
how much armsweep do you need to uncurl?
like Pan I am--will allways everr bee,
I'll dance the length and breadth of creation
to flow you how closed you uncome to me
but be carefelt what you wist for, liebchen
when eyes are ope'd to possibilitease
that know no no no-no bounds, some do seize.
#10
I want to know what makes you real -
gates of imagination opened
like wings, this rise makes me feel
the need to sink, swim or run
past whatever boundaries we
created. Does love need reality?
Whether you say eye or I see
There is still what I wish, your deal,
sir. I bow to you, defer in slur
that makes you laugh. Show me your hide
Not your hidden in a flurry
of letters, your beginnings sly
How long will you consent to distance?
Seize touch sigh to breathe, I untwist.
#11
quest (i(on(in)))' intensions is danger'us;
layhers so me tiemes appear dis cleer up on
insectshun for a not her(s), but knot us,
we no that weirds we're de signed two toungle.
I meaned (see, meant) too tease thinks gent-ly free,
too push too prod too probe in at around
bound aries subly, s oft sssmmmoooth care fully.
I see you'll have none of those silly sounds.
eye cande scrybe in al lure id detail
this hide I'd hid in the ohpen for who
sit sin he re insinuating y our mail,
give you all you can you take you if you
untwistfull won mmmore furl, pleas, oft his scene;
somewords reveil thinks unmeant to be seen.
#12
A quest(ion) is less risky than to assume
and I see that I have done both in my wonder
I ask, What do you think of white blooms?
to start the rumination above and under
around phrase and fable, lily of the valley.
Hide or not I hand it all over to you
in your shushing tease. My thaw of spring folly
and rise to the surface is offered to few.
We live in all seasons but words find me confined
to the vernal, equal light in stars and sun
The leaf I pressed between pages is still veined
with green scent, but is brittle to the touch.
Who will read these letters, wrapped in a color
they don’t understand? Look and you see me (be)fore.
#13
wit bl(.oO!Oo.)mmms (ahhh) insplode fall the weigh two hear,
you a maze me wisp s(whee!)t sinplicity
(eye remumble me be the won too cheer),
innure decaydance, nature claritease
eye thunk of wit belooms the much they thunk
of me (butt eye giggle jiggley more);
they lonly sweigh, eye kneed too fligh!, spelunk¡
frumm the ways you wiggle wriggle (be)fore
f(all)ing intwo love is sum misnomer
hit ist mmmm-ore luck untwo rise- lift- soar-!ng
eye sea know hehe-mocean's breach comber
becaused be why be y/our shoubtporing
know mat her who heart I try you still knead
too here unanswerves: if you'll dance, I'll lead.
#14
The whole world is our possession
brilliant jewel alight from inside
every insight of light possible
dreams a different dream of quiet.
A comic brilliance how we make love
from nothing, pressure applied
through years to bear bijoux. By Jove
we may never get it, the inside
joke - right, a trifle this alchemy
of us that no one sees. You are there
because I look. You appear for me
through science and shadow, facets where
dawn greets evening. You who fill my heart
with gems and laughter, a rare find you are.
#15
succulent succubus sibilant shun b s r
delicate intricate fricative slide i d i d
confident conflagrant confluent sure r b s
affliction affection inflection rhyme
b i r d s s
beau gestes elixir philosopher's stone i d
dessicate piqued piquant panacea r r r
sexton sextant allheal catholicon d i d i
dapper dandy dips ave maria b i r d s b i r d s b
b i r d s b i r d s
subterfuge sleight of hand misdirection b i r d s b i r d s
down it falls down it comes down it floats up b i r d s
nevermind we don't mind interdiction b i r d s b i r d s
I'd bow here at the end, coattails flipt up b i r d s b i r d s
b i r d s b i r d s
but these are just clever letters not b i r d s b i r d s
how can you fall in love with only words
#16
You hand me a conflagration of birds
and their open spaces, expanse of sky
twitter of feathers flutter in your words
no accident in our fall and to ask why
would destroy by dissection, a cut-up
cutout snowflake child’s artwork simple
subtraction of triangle, square enough
to create a blizzard at whiteout level
I want to capture all that flies at windows -
words, birds, snow and my heart’s odd float
for all to see the way the world flows.
I am adrift in the way we devote
our words to the wisps of air, whirl and tilt
confettied scraps married into quilts.
#17
you are a conflagration of words
and we're open spaces, expanse of why,
twitter of whethers utter in my birds,
(no accident in our fallen). To task sky
would descry by inspection; it's enough
to cutout snowflakes. Our work's child level,
subteraction of try angle, cut-up,
two create a blizzard with Wite·Out® enough.
I want to be your all that flies, word flows,
worlds, birds, snow, and my heart's devote,
for all to see the weight of windows.
I am adrift in the way we odd float
our words into wisps of care, purl and quilt
confettied scraps into married tilts.
*****
When writers woo, wily words will wriggle wickedly. We were wishing written words would wink while whispering, would wrap "we" within wanting's warp & weave.
DW/JH-K
J.S. Murnet
Nape Intention
1) Nape luggage or your cubic phase
2) Blood’s brushed upon awake prints (princely)
3) Spent shoelace through your laundry mile
4) Tell truth torch feathery limelight gone to see(d)
5) Name cogs falling off the wheel
6) Sporadic tic tic almonds left in place
7) Truss sample or your runnel luggage
8) Rusting ample gauges wampum twice
9) Mice chewing in the handle troubled
10) Succumb to activist sprigs warming toward the ice pie
11) Drop the foci on your knee
12) Tell an officer who pays you fourfold two and two
13) Reach the dusty hammer in your leg
14) Constrain the tapeworm’s musical intentions
Numbers
Natty, pungent, ratified young huckster
piled into sea smoke deftly as tonnage,
fluted, socked with shale in a bag olfactory
young factory with catzoid living on the
fence between us and next door habitat
cushioned in the dust and footer clouds
where mist tones land the gentry off in cabled
storms waft rinsed comb sings damply like a
towel taking the sweet talk in as liquid only
to evaporate the thuggish shower stall where
songbirds are exempt from judgment calls
and timbre floating, the caves tock beneath
your feet, the clouds rice the trees
the wheat chlorine (are you) intentional or un-
debated rice the queen him soco
logic tod sent the roofers low cast
shaken teetering then thus-ful as a rope
through hands (still standard) logistic
tuning dorks spread feet and doll
lake crashing upon monthly retainers fed
to ovals for replenishing the exes monkey
maze or was that clocking in the
excavation? More the better’s
stung strep zonking pilot-faced
clapper swallowed, steer the throat
nickel (nickel?) tons of smoke
about tears (whose) as recollected entropy,
as mild efficient stacks of scars or
tumbled fish, tumba chained, corporation of
the sandwich tinder, swelling prior, sold for
the piñata change in fistfuls a cloud
stapled to a jar looked at through
balljar glasses feigning coke-bottle lenses
just “thinking in the sights” (or stumbled)
onto (or apart from) stippled
vigor (also rigor) de rigeur
rippled down your back or funneled
hair knows the way confederate knows
the way “federalist” knows the way pie plates
shatter on the freeway like windows chaparral
or norteamericano pilgrims falling
crawdads spear the bells an ice gate
shines alongside burglary three impacted
wisdom (owning) teeth I thought
were yours. Club burger steaming on the
river less a bite of sap a drink of wood a
steel plate under the splint shield core
redactive forehead melts beneath your
helmet where heart visits the cage
of brain hemp, tubs, combs, starts
of nattering in the Laundromat with freckles
louvered in the shorelight dimeside linkage
storms and covers, focused pores you read
in under way below standards of heat light
power gab, stroked the bands of sight
and loosening guard doon frets still
quasi in contigulosity (or loess)
shoveled through the steam and clamp
suits pressed to scuttle as an afterthought
rustling off your neck a pool leaking
vectors someone principally floats to see
iff sshapeness corns the ffinger roaming
amid serenity imposed sans faculty of wash
fan grubby tulips breathe behind the garage
in situ parsed and grim due to the missing
fluorokeets and switches. Was “like a”
tamping of the air and handles pit-fully not
printed, rinsed, who-says sharp corners offer
bad chi? Soak mothballs in the bathtub, sleep,
taste the air crimp speech get full
refund on deleted intentions, freshen up the
supper sticker; all the queasy hands
full stoppers floating on the craft itself, why
not stammer that sax reed floating toward
the mud where shimmers line the dowry
kinked with flotilla embers spine-ing
sinkers float against the sky we norm by
broad binocularia, our thumbs clutter]
damply eye the shipping spattered with your name
or call to inflammation a restraint thrums
against the sidewalk blander than the phone
or qualified to lurch into the spun
locks whirling in the grass the flowers cough above
why not perseverate? The grass combed looks quite
feared like knockwurst and foam, a pile
of ants cantankerous as blood gone granular
stung log where the melons rot unless you time them
being short on safety, shy of lapper at the
deem chile formal draft dorsal internment
lab buttered lakely lijke a faucet tamed
in rococo boots lined amuck with snort foil,
wipe it cleanly with a dirt was that your
cuke or relative tympanum times two on the
receiver (s)ide gladder than a slump of
cactus sloppy in your ear also replete with
ground up daggers over sweet vermouth,
towelettes and sausage, rates and cobs
and simmering bedraglia for starters:
kind of clumply phoning snarled in sheets
that laugh out loud and barter baloney
rolls or was that tootsie belting clam
throat a crunchy briglet seafoaming on
sly air erring eith earrings to catch
cloisters drained of cloud what hopping left
is minted by thread until a rash is formed
(informed) (preformed) or pouts like
lunch scissors, ice in rags and dampened
by intaglio to simmer (wimp) like decals
floated past the intake halve, your plinking
scowled your tub mist tried to fetch an
inkling damaged by the spinning of yr fog.
Was that the tiny writ? The soap re
demption? The aboveboard yodel whee unstacked
packing a walrus shooter, what a clocking what
a pendant slapper or a cigarette stub
stuffing the discernment left in right hand
bracelets like a phonebooth sinking in the lake
and who does not look vacant in the places dowagers
confabulate like socks and chisels, soap streaking
off the rocks of compass meant, to wit, all
ivory repairs the foreheads lobbed against the
bolster rains cheeking down the leg
staccato as stones’ tines typefacing a blood
storm blooming in the rice and turning oil
into emphatic numbers on a roll for hours and days.
