Aught, no. 4 (2000)

Geneva Chao

quarter inch border

if you prefer:
the image slumps right to an edge of possible, upended
Bethlehem. the portico
unfairly sealed. no space for fingers or rough edges
franked without concealment so
the formal bleeds;
or eye design the margin's fist to proffer:
pithy glove,
discretionary pull-tabs, matted
overlap, waste
to cut.


box deposit
            for F.P.H.

this pink film enclosure is
provided for your conveyance or to
isolate the red cells in the roofed
recipient's swings

first pull up then pull down
then pull all around the town
my fly-by knight my binary firefly
root for the unicorn

thought as tucking jelly sandwich
brought to launch at covert cans
cannoned inside's excavation
thick licked out.


expiration
              for W.K.-W.   

no way to say the date is passed save
check the can; in may my wealth
is flown so soft in such alarmed
distress. there: the door. light squared
and shifted. the leaning
date. collection marked and gathered.
mess perplexed. and eke my life:
no shelf to build with dust
structures save this inventory
which numbered months remain.


dipso facto

say you see it on tv with interlocking parts and a price ending in ninety-five which licks at your eyes, like old faithful, or is it yellow, as if to say you can make christmas cookies, you can make lampshades. reminiscent of nightshades which kushi perhaps says are poison to the world's northern peoples, of lampreys which always recall them in brigades of fearsome shrubbery behind which the army hides. or a window and a tail, fill in the blanks on every scattered rabbit skin, a lucky paw for your dinosaur's claw to shove down minus c's and silent consonants of which upon reflection there can be none, no sound of sounding with and does our language not console as it used, behind the pile of clinking pennies with which there is nothing to do but sign the check and send them in.

speaking of whom may a japanese pr‚tend to have one extra meter, that is linear, of intestine, which explains the unmanned blowfish and the weedy sea and which may explain the superefficient extraction of nightshade poison, in legend or in fact. former: under each of us there is a tiny plate & our myth thereupon writ small, for only the squints of the archivist. informer: diabolical microfiche or finch which serves office as the smallest and least possible, a million tiny germy birds sent through and thru, the screen. ex forma: any color, as long as it's plastic.

by this logic the peruvian to whom if on se trompe pas potatoes are native is possessed of the shortest and most beneficent of tubes, which takes no trouble to take ill and so they are a wiry and hardy people despite a daily draught of germs spurning montezuma's bigger brother for another assemblage of banes. by this logic we should train on south american tubers, immune to au gratin being a mark in pride not like or rather a mark of wood as the toes of the dancer slide in deep wax and so nancy is on the case, is on my case, is a case. in case you wonder.

regarding the charts if you should sigh or describe the appropriate circle, the apportionate box, sing again this trope a troweled label, buy my adult contemporary. gust a low or lull in eastern ears: the boy who made good gets statuette, sobriquet, sucette. the boy who made more gets a dapple-assed pony, thickly mignon. worst is for cruciferous voids, dubious hygiene, eyes lined in old paper or pyrex. these instructions are as your censor breathing clouds in hybrid tines in holy smokes. lèche-vitrine, lèche-narine, lèche-tureen. shrinking violet. fainting kasey. creeping at the windows licking out the pots.


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