She does not know
her beauty,
she thinks her brown body
has no glory.
If she could dance
naked
under palm trees
and see her image in the river,
she would know.
But there are no palm trees
on the street,
and dish water gives back
no images.
name appears
everywhere and in dream
body armor removed
what now, legacy, archivum
we female archons preserve of
intensity a durance a hand you recognize
(sounds sound)
assurance as lives on
drank of that
drank of this
almost suffocated, then drowned
downed but never
what only she could only know
as herself living in the brute time
speak of a syntax of rendition?
the politics of Empire chip away
as poetry attests, give it up
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a hot history. All writing is in fact cut-ups history will decide games heated and heated economic behavior. To rise up scene all sounds of Tahrir and inside supply side threatened. A long delineation. Longer than I would be counting. This, a whisper, this the end of whisper time. Rise up and wiser this the streets of the world. Commission overheard in spin a soldiering one. What streets of the world to spin rubric’ s yes yes commerce, no, a no, no. Tanks of the blown-off world.
Don't be misled:
that sea-song you hear
when the shell's at your ear?
It's all in your head.
That primordial tide —
the slurp and salt-slosh
of the brain's briny wash —
is on the inside.
Truth be told, the whole place,
everything that the eye
can take in, to the sky
and beyond into space,
lives inside of your skull.
When you set your sad head
down on Procrustes' bed,
you lay down the whole
At nights birds hammered my unborn
child’ s heart to strength, each strike bringing
bones and spine to glow, her lungs pestled
loud as the sea I was raised a sea anemone
among women who cursed their hearts
out, soured themselves, never-brides,
into veranda shades, talcum and tea moistened
their quivering jaws, prophetic without prophecy.
Anvil-black, gleaming garlic nubs, the pageant arrived with sails unfurled
from Colchis and I rejoiced like a broken
Melt the fat around the heart;
Leave only muscle.
For us
Spectators
Leave
Only muscle;
Only trim the fat
To depth.
And, even if you
Nick the heart,
If you tear it
Or scratch it,
If you slice a petal off it,
Don’ t sweat it.
Be mindful only
That you leave the muscle
Clean,
Sheared of fat.
Or you can
Char the heart,
Melt down the fat,
Then eat it
With fucking
Fava beans.
Whatever you do,
Be sure
‘Aber die Thronen, wo? Die Tempel, und wo die Gefäße,
Wo mit Nektar gefüllt, Göttern zu Lust der Gesang?
‘Someone’ s got it in for me’
for Jack Spicer
the fabber craftsman
I. THE FUNERAL MARCH (CHICAGO AND ORLEANS)
1
I now release from my blood the bird of thirty she wasted
that’ s how wars crumble us
I now tell those who are exhausted from the expense
of children the secret of happiness and happiness itself
The kiss is, strictly speaking, a passing
of of twice: a bead from her mouth to his,
then back, ad nauseam, and the boys who lived
and died for it. The lovely girl amassing
ninety-nine spirits, and in high spirits
for consuming her highest amount. Once
the hundredth boy arrived she starts her hunt
in her haunt, a hill’ s field filled with fitting
Artemisia absinthium.
And every day they kissed to swap the bead
and for a month he waned and wans
I would drive the pre-dawn dark to stake
my spot to fish for dinner, to numb my hands in the ice
bucket, to pluck, from the neat stack, a herring,
to fit the skullcap and pierce the eye with a toothpick,
the body double-hooked, my fingertips glimmering
with the scales of the dead while the line whined free
from the reel, and the bait arced out over the tidal current
on a point in view of the town where I lived,
