Aught, no. 10 (2003)


Alan deNiro

Asphoedel

(1)Saints bleach hair and grow mullets.
(2)He was cured by hens.
(3)Brass city along the wedding fingers of the elect.
(4)Their tough hides he cured, saving to distribute.
(5)Once the demons discovered agriculture.
(6)And we plucked eyebrows of their fire.
(7)I, like many girls, swooned towards the fixtures.
(8)The ridden light.
(9)How it broke the legs of curios and boys.

 

Asphaodel

O so this trumpeter is nevertheless a
hill dwarf, impregnate the juttings.
Flingers and spleen throwers mount
rock and garbage soil, devise fucking
and sipping motions of their tongues,
earmark for the final days my name.
Watch me, from terraces, from
hairpin turns. Everyone clenches
a bluegreen jade someone. A trickster
someone. The knoll broke
in all the right houses, in deep observations
of the people and the
statue of what? I entreat
the hill rocking below me. My nipples
are the bones of my eyes but not the sockets.
I evade the die—
it loved my copper republic in
lower reaches a message, a liver, a
temple. All the wrong people were untenable
stamen, what I cannot yet become,

 

Asphadael

The gods left their golden
sweatervests onto the imageless people

The knittings were speakers for the dead
Sacrifices were made to names

These are the histories of smoked food
You have given me a rough tonic

Then the capers in hell continued until
I couldn't write it down any more

The phoenix rose into ashcan
Breaking the silence and looking afraid

Pick a flower any flower
Did you expect a blossom of knives

Where does our garden grow

 

Asfadel

what are plunging into with headtoe first
dreamed breakfast pondside with dates
art thou devil fingers ours on
the table and are they gloria range big with
succinct eponymous child are the miniature
giraffes following the scent along prophet's rowboats
look it yourself in Numbers there is little
left except the wakes you wake and spin
chicken vanes casting iron nets awakened

 

Asphodel

Quails dovetail in the history of ruin, the quartz fury, and
Yet no one will deny that the heart is musical? And then I am
A bird. Flighty, "the total package," I promised to my father
That my metamorphosis wouldn't be an impediment but
Something to make him proud. The statues had no faces on their
Necks. The flocks engage in cybersex, and the soapbox derby
Mothers arrive at the bottom of the story to grieve and then what


Copyright © 2003, by the author. All rights reserved.
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