A POEM A DAY FOR “NATIONAL” POETRY MONTH [APRIL 2007]
THESE POEMS ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT OVARIESSEQUINS.BLOGPOT.COM
Synthetic Animals
I lied. We went into the woods.
But when did we come out? And into
light that was like the light
of an amusement park, themes
of many colors charming the wheel?
Facades of arrow-hoofs under a dome
of expired wires, glitter-pins
amid plastic coxcombs, gills flared, fur
mapped in imaginary lines. Menagerie
replicating thrills, feigning capture.
Glisten-grill like a pair of jaws unlocked.
MUST IT BE TURNED ON?
REGIMEN
You Are NOT allowed to do
anything unless it is new.
You think this is a rib-flick
joint, a root burrow?
Everywhere's a desert
these days. You may braid your
hair, you may make a ladder, you
may make a trail, a house, a wheel.
But its the fattening that matters.
A lap for greased palms. We love
those who frighten us the best.
Renaissance
Amid genuflecting spheres, bands
of nylon filled with sand, knotted
to become disembodied pairs, headless
limbs spread as though to scissor
the white air or swim-kick
the dry light, shredded tiers
of warped atria, of wrapped hollows
and corners shaped by where
and how a body wants to move.
My pen moves like a needle
in the wrist, ink-flick of a vein about
to bloom, about to loosen, about to lose.
SOME TYPES OF FEARFUL SYMMETRY
It's true: we're all for making blame
disappear. But when it comes
to linking, those choke-chains
tear at skins and walls as if pinned
with eyelash glass and hollow
marrow tubes. The organs tune
their keys, devour clues. The scum
rules under the gun, under un-
believable yellows and blues, sour
as soap rubbed in fur. Aorta, a cannon
inferred, spare spears in the swallow
___________________(in tombs).
SYRINX
Syringe of singing, see-saw sealer
seeking a find. No note for the taking.
Take-toc-tic, the slit lip the sleek throat
whittled to a line that hollows and pours.
Clean beam of the tuning. Little red wheel
mining the air, fountain of bloom near water
spills, trilling. Sweet throat of the nipped
whistle plumed with beading -- rubber band
thrumming -- threshold beating with chime.
COINCIDENCE OF WANTS
little captions scattered
___________________feed and seed
(I see where what was buried blooms)
you are nothing to me
________
one could burrow, worm through
one could move, under stylus of worm, glue
the undersigned (the underused)
_________
persona or mask? I could not do (Plath)
__________
they bathed the recluse in ashes
not made by a body, but by oiled feathers
made as leather, a leaking hurt
threaded through
_______
pull it
we can use it
Victory Blue
INTO THE WOODS
You were all for leaving; no beauty
contests or pageant queens. The trees
were full of secrets, undisturbed
save for several endangered species.
I wanted to bring my trowel
in a basket, hopeful that digging
might relieve the strain and static
of clinging phone lines. The roof
of the barn smoked, begging for rain.
I raked rows for sowing, dirt
blackened from where you hung
the doe. New greens from these
hewn veins remind us, tasting of coal.
Mine Field/Bridle
THERE WAS RED WORK IN THE BACKGROUND
Which Things Could We Use?
1. Luthier, hook, we should try
to be so hard. String-wound. Coil.
2. All the sewn books go tap tap tap at
the tabernacle door. Rib-swifts. Lung-guards.
3. Threaded jar lip. Tender rips. Dome
of forget-me-not blue. Rotten we.
4. Soldier-love and spark-sparrows
lifting wool where needles fall. Curtain dirty.
5. Monstrous sail eight times folded
to a purse. Cotton-wire crewel.
6. Paneled hilt. A spring-pulled
labyrinth. Hoof-print primed.
7. Vernacular gills web cold tablets, close flaps.
Arrows: little throats stuffed with thread.
OF PREY
Today the falcons -- wings curled like lashes
at their tips -- their wings making marks -- slashes
back and forth above me -- etched a zig-zag script
upon the air. The trees ripped
of their leaves -- bare but for the few black nests
in their branches -- cast their stray branches like nets
up at the sky, their ragged limbs
reaching for the birds -- the falcons' slim
outlines -- letter-bone-bodies writing a song
that sounds like winter -- lean, and white, and long.
"domestic incident"
One thing, a peg on the board, could
be isolated. Pushed forward along
the block to block path that swayed
front to back and back; the peg
moved dully along. The trained eye
does not blink back. They
are trained to not come back.
Roving the boxed-in track, the pegs
truck along. Not in halves or pairs
or packs, no door-to-door knocking.
No knocked over bottles. No
pink babies in the back. Only
the tick tick tick as the lines
thicken and sink. One by one
as elsewhere ink overflows its gutters.
Everyone Came Running
No hands: x-ray breast laced with lead, bullet
in the house come chasing skin. Flame
cells happened the way snow held
glass, magnifying everything.
ON THE LINES
person_______________________________________________________
______________________________________________person______
___________person______________________________
___________________________person______________________________
_____________person_______________________________
___________________________person___________________________________
Sender/Receiver
Glossary of veins, clittella
and brain, crops of hearts
and ventricles. Nephridia
uncurled a series of bones
so that the blood concealed
its surfaces. Coalescence
of waves and fuel where
two skins meet. Rubbed
together, ignition keyed
for fences. Dust and glass
and nails spread by metal
birds, fragile engines flashing
incendiary streamers.
HALFWAY HOUSE
As if it were halfway home:
the red dogs the same
color as the beach, the swimmers
turning gold, the tops
of underwater mountains
forgiving hydrogen and grenades.
It's only a phase. The green
river full of ash quivers
like a bow; the winter swans
did not return this year, nor
did the silver swim flicks, minnow
towers swaddled in the haze.
IF more than half are called away
again, the other half will never
come home: paper cranes
folded into shallow paper graves.
TREASURE MAP
It's not enough to just
be lost. Magpie
at the mistress box
and glass jaw bobbing.
Thieving a way home
along the hems
with the bobbin. "X"
is where, gathered
in the crook of a tree,
jewels and bones construct
a furtive geometry. Cages
or faux forests composed
by driftwood staked
in tundra, the gorgeous
lie of generous muscles.
LIKE A LAMB
They would answer us if only
they knew our names. The glimmer
threaded through phone lines, spools
and spools of wire. Our numbers rifle.
They file them away. We could go riding
but then we could not pretend
the story ended anywhere other
than a sort of taming, braids
and boxes made for captives.
When they call us, it's as though
their voice is made of worms
and all our longings dirt.
LIKE A LION
The lupine is so obvious
in its blue, not like asphodel
which is white and cold
and smells like death.
Not like us who pretend
to forget this is the betting
list, the get. The odds
are our way of pretending.
April is the mime forging
outlines: apple, machine
gun, stray letters in the slug-
gutter. Clone of our dotted
lines: mirrors untethered
and let to roam sinew
and gravel, the slow roads
we build away from home.
Only the still patience
of the toys compares
to our games with glue and paper.
Let's forget it's spring -- say
the ash on the air
is actually snow.
Winter is the mother
of invention; it buries us.
1.
no arrival, only the construct
a tethered thing, a lid
to lift
2.
wood from the sea
where birds are made
wood box
the saw
through
white tail
tip
blade feather
box of knives
box of beds
3.
thermometer for blood making
syringe, feeder
drained and piled
faceless wings
shaped to slip, flesh grip
soft and bone
glass on stone
tip red tip
knock on bone
without breath
________
outside, too
a life stretch
brown and moving
eye, wing stitch
the missing sound
boxless
_________________
4.
sad neck, deflated
unfrozen and soft
homeless, three
sisters
missing home
tapered tail to tip
unlidded
without flight
I'm awake in the scissors
of ten thousand lines, the ascension
of soldiers. The lamplight
here is cruel sometimes; limbs
squiggle in the haze, the letters
rearrange themselves, anagram
constructing a refrain, silvery
and unlimited. Do you
mimic or lie? The flax
threshing allows us to deny
the frayed hems, the genuflecting
tides strewn with radioactive
plastics that elide the difference
between safety and disaster.
A mouth of salt makes ink elastic
and all our papers brine.
_all the kings horses_
Body puzzle, where to begin
to put you back together again?
Sun-yolk spilt, my split heart
plump with thieving (even
that isn't mine)
_________________Like
a pencil the missile moves
over the city; outline of streets
and houses traced and tensile.
Soldier, isotope, when you
report the green sunset
and how the halos bloomed
and the ash clouds bundled
one thousand shovels,
the budding pacers
made from prosthetic
transplants, silk lantern
engines fit for larceny, become
sails knit together with
shrapnel, a place for roofs
to grow if it finally rains.
* Is it scary to read the bellumletters? I do not necessarily want it to be scary, but I acknowledge that link-clicking poses a certain degree of risk for the reader. Where will the link take me? will I be offended? manipulated? upset?
* I like the way links make clear the "underneath-ness" present in all text: the zip-current that binds the syntax , the sentence bridle. I also like being able to make links with the surface details of the poems -- the way a link works as a sort of metaphor-maker. But it's oblique; not literal. AWAY.
* What is "the news"? How do we get it? I do not even know what news is. Is it the most important stuff that happened today? Who is the news for? How is the news here different from the news there?
* I think of the bellumletters as being somewhere in between documentary and commentary. Also, it is highly subjective: when I select links, I'm also documenting the things that I read that day. They are not always all about the war in Iraq, but they are all about cruelty, suffering, or lies.
* This war is so dumb and makes me so sad but saying it feels hollow and vague. I don't know what to say about it. So I say around it. This is not enough.
* The "national" part is the most odious aspect of "national poetry month." I dislike nations. Why "national"? It seems strange. The monthification is perhaps superficial, but it's the national that I disdain. Especially today.
l i g h t h o u s e
i.
the village is an instrument
for cash. lavender skyline
smudged to pink. It's how
the sun shines in: round
curve grinding snails
to bits. Where bars
suggest animal and faux moss
the garden imagined by capitalists.
ii.
the frozen birds
today were like starlight
streaming through a sieve.
Feathers soft despite
the cold. We dragged
the goose home in a net
and then arranged the quills
upon a shelf. It's like
pretending somewhere
else the lantern still exists;
machines of nesting, a wealth
of stunned propellers.
As if that lets you off the hook. My skirt
could not become your palm, spread
wreckage of tires, triggers.
Giddyup, lover. (But really
you are full of it.) I practiced
making fists under the table
as garden walkers rowed the aisles
with sown syringes. You think
I don't know how you stay
awake so long? The taste
of gunpowder on your wrists
and the dogs barking
all through the night. I hang
my garments on the line
inviting fire, syllables.
WEATHER REPORT
Not everyone is legible:
spider syndicate, lace fences
hung for borders where wires
cross and heal. A hanger
for a hand, a healer. Which
wires cross? One is lost
among the ruins
of arcades and alleys
pretending threads
and glue make bottleships.
No letters bind
him to a mother's mast.
The belly is a bone
to heal. Take one
thing from her
and she becomes a house:
a loaded gun come mended.
OPEN BOOKS or PROFIT
It will not be enough to open
the wires; the monkey records
filed away shall be shelled
and scattered and planted
as keys hid in the garden wall
pretend roots where a lens
flowers unlock their soft
hocks to dispel wounds
excited by the spring rage
of rockets, plastic, and microphones.
The diesel ills. How can we fill
the dirt with so many books
when so many come home empty.
P R E V E N T I O N
Today I drew marks
in the sand; they
reminded me of letters
or bones or teeth. Perhaps
you would call them vulgar.
The light pulls back
as an arm draws the arrow.
Bow, the bough breaking.
Rope and pulley singing
as wind throws birds
from the cliffs. It isn't even
ours -- this sand. We are
so stupid sometimes.
.
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