m, in multiples

at which
faded faded
inquiry response
into solid parameters
fading
over
a fantastic geometry
curled
in a wave of salt
and translation

m, this letter silently
returns a concrete image
(each scene you depict)
(the sound of vision)
listen, to the particles of light
motion a naturalist textbook

the green-blue rainbow
turned in on itself

exercise for today


On my tongue memories of foul snowflakes, in the rain, hair a twisted tangle of oatmeal and butterflies. I tolerate balloons and butterflies in lieu of phone communication or the education of birds, disintegration of every winning lottery ticket. Don’t fake this egg. The axe, my teeth, sharpen safety and watermelon over a meal of marginalia. The mushrooms have grown distant this year. The miasma encircles, lingers, travels far to hold the pieces apart. If you were only as large as a pea, we would have lost your shoes altogether, the leaf a structure of redemption and shelter, your tail flailing for want of a protective cape.

“The poem is the record of the body”

--D.A. Powell

The nuts and bolts of expression

after Mark Levine


henri
your soda your skullcap
fear, unzipping confetti
a parade, spoiling, bleached
an electric quill, a robe, a statue
(a single alp?)

cobblestones and dirt spiral away from plaster
pose held, like a 10 syllable disease
graphite, cardboard, coal all lie flat
on canvas

rings around a grove of thistles
forgetting the machine, uranium, fallout
and the copper voices

the falling vase signals chronic geometry
an acacia dying alone near the marsh

gravel surrounding a nest of resin and clay
under the willow the circuit, magnetic, ceasing

toward

do what you will to organize, plan, predict, claim space and texture as your own-- we will all, each in ways green or scattered across / among consider the lyric, the sense of sound and interior vision, piles over words, a quality of moving music-- of which genre placed multiply factors organized around each green formica coffee flavor-- catch the contents of your stomach before anxiety spills over, reach inside the deep idea or a notion of grey jettisons over each strand of disturbed carpet, justifies its own reckless element-- place, please, words together get words use others' get a dictionary replace text determine a new language-- choose-- translate for/toward a new politic a new season/sense

each

Serena knew G before the catastrophe before the trauma that affected them all. Small and wise, her scent like blueberry lavender lingered before and after her arrival and departure. G before the trauma, she used to say, had curls flowing around her face, skin the flavor of sweet ice in summer. G, once upon a time, painted life-size canvases with her toes, using every color in the spectrum, and then some.

Barth always sang. He wondered about G, and never believed Serena's stories about the hair, but he wanted to believe that once upon a time, G also sang. Lyric pastoral stories put to music. So lovely. So perfect. Barth sang his own part of conversations, and otherwise spoke little, it seemed, as a way to maintain a space, a no-place away from the spoken world. He thought about this for a while apparently, until finally encountering the post-catastophe G, whose entire spacial presence confirmed his notion. And he only sang more.

On a particular afternoon, Barth hummed, G sighed, and Serena recorded each detail of the lawn, on which they sat, in front of the house where no one lived. The long folding blades of grass tickled their calves. The color of the house faded with each note that Barth found to express. Serena asked G if she would decide to paint again soon. G turned toward the old tree at the far end of the yard, turned back toward Serena who watched the face with no expression for only an instant before G got up from the grass, and walked straight into the house whose door pushed back with no more than a gentle groan.

exercise

Those normal clouds, this common air, participate in and are the cause of a surging resistance.--C. Harryman, Gardener of Stars

Trailing along, she bends grass, slithers through weeds, walks over dirt humming change. Pale and unmoving, lemon-scented air past her ears, through eyes, she decides not to become one unknown and trampled, but to march solid, quell fear, and create a determined identity. Each shaded step rings across a spectrum of silent language. Each layer, a body of texture and promise.

strain(ed)

aching individual spokes
sizzle around summer
stakes settled in
unmoving minutes

of shade sparkled
kids on foot
watching bikes

fallen under dirty skin
dust clenching
strokes
the back of a knee

unaided waiting
in dismay
optic nerves
clenched
strive, arch

a new poem on Rewords, after JKD, after Sean S...