“Make flour into dough,” she answers,
“and fire will turn it into food.
Ash is the final abstraction of matter.
You can just brush it away.”
She tacks a sheet of paper to the wall,
dips her hand in a palette of flour and ash,
applies the fine soft powders with a fingertip,
highlighting in chalk and graphite,
blending, blurring with her thumb.
Today she is working in seven shades of gray.
On the news tonight, a presidential
colonoscopy — a tale ofhow
for three whole hours the chief exec of trouble
handed trouble to his vice (although
no double trouble came), but then no more
details revealed: no bacterial armies
multiplying in a flare of war
among kingly polyps & no kinky creases.
The tint of the sky between sunset and night.
And wandering with you and your nephew
in that maze, half-lost — Madrid
of the Austrias — looking for Plaza of the Green
Cross where, days before you arrived,
an Opel with false plates was parked, its wheels
straddling the curb, and so the van
heading for the barracks that morning
had to slow to squeeze
past... Back at the hotel your mom
is holding up her gift — Amethyst, she says
admiring how light
when passing through a prism
Once there came a man
Who said:
“Range me all men of the world in rows.”
And instantly
There was a terrific clamor among the people
Against being ranged in rows.
There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.
It endured for ages;
And blood was shed
By those who would not stand in rows,
And by those who pined to stand in rows.
Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.
And those who stayed in the bloody scuffle
Knew not the great simplicity.
History can't be rushed.
We didn't have time to see the village,
we didn't have time to see the house fall
to build light out of mud,
nor did we see time burning.
The city is missing,
and we've saved others,
our backs turned.
What happened
is a different reality in everyone's mind,
but the direction we took
tells us the world doesn't end
when we force air out of bones.
Now we know the myth
by the cup of coffee going cold,
realize we were never told
how to take
Tune yr sandwich to the key of C
Make biscuits in kitchen B
Miss Scarlet with her lead pipe
Waits behind the cupboard door
Clubs one from the other limp
Only to begin again innocent
& nothing to do but gather into
Legion gather into constellation
Coming along then a spider its web
Holds the walls together holds the floor
Up gathers toward a central point
Mean & distribution derivation
To insert a thumb & see what sticks
Past the earth’s crust cirrus
How large was Alexander, father,
That parties designate
The historic gentleman as rather
Inordinately great?
Why, son, to speak with conscientious
Regard for history,
Waiving all claims, of course, to heights pretentious, —
About the size of me.
