Aught, no. 14 (2005)
Unique Forms of Continuity Within Void
A chord cannot be held always
or boxed. And a woman can stream milk
for anyone, mugger or mogul, each drop spooling
like grace, like bisque. There was the night
we wed, you feeding me marzipan papaws
with your teeth. Our love
not yet shrouded
by time's daft—but accurate—disguises. The images
of trees, projected on those bodies, formed
exact maps of avenues
both vascular and skeletal. We then knew
one monkey couldn't stop
the show. We then knew a sea anemone
could inch into the throat, become
the throat. Reproducing by fission.
Our flesh awash
with saline. That easily
anyone can become an ocean,
as fractals are just roadmaps
for twinning, after all.
It is best to be attached
to a firm object, but occasionally
to shift about very slowly. There is no network
of stoppages. Often, you are visited by a food cart
that advertises, Carnitas-Hamburgers-Eggrolls-Kebob-
Sushi-Pizza! When the Chieftains
activate the light fantastic, essences cohere,
e.g., All homeless signs echo,
Hungry. Pumpkins are sometimes carved
with maps of the world. If a magnum and Sterno
once transformed any doorway
into a home for one, now, strangers choose
to embrace you, for they are immune
to stinging tentacles. Accept that forever the flocks
of little birds will coil about, merrily singing, Thrombosis!
Hey, you could flee, establish a new colony
in a vacant field mouse nest. Yet this web grows stronger
if the captured struggle. Ooh, release to the breath—
it's a window here, just as snow is bread. And the lion
has become the lamb.
Benedict, your embraces
once were stays. We loved
the June field then, our planar picnic,
Dexedrine clouds whip-skittering
above. But now, after your leaving,
there are rip cords. Penumbras. And ice
that can only report
it harbors air. Two possibilities remain—
A) Zero is gibbous.
Or
B) From the tipping dinghy,
our skeletons lisp, It was a nice life.
The answer: A).
Although true love
has taken the first bus
out of town, there is still singing
through the waters, chiming
in the sheaves. Those trumpets of Jerusalem.
And I a galleon, untethered, each tide
a mecca that knows
and presses this hull.
Fillips of a Fragmented Valhalla
1. Unable to bear the stain. Or, at the other end of the spectrum,
to tolerate
each cell's pivotal kiss. How to be a hive
in which all of history has been stored?
Possible refuges: Foulards. Scarabs. Sweetbriar
at my breasts.
2. Always a daddylonglegs is striding stickily across, mocking
our veneer. Our nightstand
will be shedding alpaca this evening. Darling,
your wet pulses!
Surrealism: a lyric battle.
Against this terrestrial sphere
of surfaces.
3. Typically, any mixture of broken, discordant elements
is labeled "monster."
Yet: Echo dismembered—
by shepherds. Each crumb at last
truly singing.
4. The decision was made, without great thought, to place
just a finger (why not all?) into the side
of every god.
Nonresponsive.
Regrettably, everyone has left, in individual packets.
For the moon.