Aught, no. 15 (2006)
Remains: A Mystery
the bodies languishing over the sky
Trailing their dark identities— Charles Wright from "Night Journal"
More than many nouns, the body begs to be described.
[entered: green Clairefontaine (trademark): series of 3"x5" bound notebooks,
in various colors, found in the upstairs (8'x11') bedroom of her home]
Say "Brain," to mind wanders a reluctant tortoise, its intestines inside out,
[beside this entry a pencil drawing of same]
"brain scan" by turns, its kaleidoscopic lower shell, under un-belly
[three illustrations (described below) perhaps cut from record jackets
and attached with double-stick tape; captioned, left to right, three words]
Anhedonia
[woman with small arrow through lower lip, third eye closed, brain dark]:
I seldom entertain more than the thought of guests.
Euphoria [in orange wet-suit, wild grin, star-fish eye,
too thin] : My house, idea-lit, is a hard place to sleep;
harder yet to put together a decent meal, unless you're
the type to be content [as she was] with phrases,
plump as grapes, an occasional broccolian sentence.
Melancholia
[every Thursday's menu]
I forbid myself the Paragraph, a rich dessert [see "pear"and "pair"]
Sine Qua Train[*]
There is nothing like remaining. As if
a 3am train your dreamed the whistle
in from not-your-time (not at all), the berth
first of the end-stops car slowly rising
[*previously titled Test Case]
[words on the front-door wind chimes, covered with abandoned webs and
various dead insects] Happy Spiders Live Here
Take A Spin Laundry and Casino
One glance off-task and what used to square, spins. Here comes another fearful
statistic, nonchalant, whisper-quiet in toe-dyed sneaks, a decade early. Her chance
parlor & laundromat is such a holy mess: empty Rit boxes and pull-tabs, pop-tarts
and Pall Malls, warning labels, dead corsages. She replaces one rule with ten
exceptions (this is her job), and the rule is happier, disproved. In the color-fast lost,
she finds the even-numbered of every suit and renders them sleeveless. Great
numbers feel saved by their missing arms: nowhere to stash the trick. Trying not
to unravel, the heavily-soiled linens maintain their dignity while the numbers nose
around. It's best not to set your cycles by the activities of mere statistics. She
decides to take the advice of a ventriloquist and hire a muralist to paint her reality —
a collaborate deception.