Echomage
I.
It's so quiet and still at the moment. the one mighty note pealing from the bell with indexing and cross-collation the slough of stultification glossy red coupe My brother has Valium in his front pocket Someone unfolds a lawn chair in the back of a truck. today her life depends on nothing save the flowers of the field. the promise of afternoon sun in the east who could be friends, who would never be. I taught her how to read music from a book I had at home. Mary taught me how to chant for rain. fucked like hyenas on the mustard tile. thighs slapping like caught bluegills, her touch tender like foxgloves. her breath is betel nut. aggravating calm. nails lightly oiled. shield her silvered Directional Arrow Thunder in the forecast--no joke. Something is turning around in its den, ready to awaken. cravings to be here inside with me outside something he left the season where everything you need is either lost or somewhere in the process of being lost, distance and boundaries, the construction materials of fortified cities. we ambled separately, between the times we weathered each other's company. The Pickle and the Caveman The bell hums in sympathy with the swell of the organ, Sisyphus, On Ritual the galaxy given voice, creation at a touch, we would lay down our lives teal pebbles,
II.
a game he thought he couldn't lose. hand carved pieces, faces seemingly alive-- He shared strategies but never downplayed his ability. The night of my first victory the orchestra tuning like frogs and crickets He looks at us. a thing of screens and 3-prong cables, willows await | the williwaw. Grave stones lined up behind a parade of fence posts along a gravel road, EEK a mouse routine. size and label float in the Great North Pacific Trash Island The edge in your hello to your husband for no reason you can name-- Take the help, not the easy assumption. a scorpion in my blankets, We rocked on her porch swing, ate crawfish casserole, swatted black flies. There was no man in sight--only the neighbor's dog heaving on the chain, a fertile purple-blue until you're mown. Does brightness or depth bring you more hope? knotted wicks, snipped neat to stay lit, 4. Tulip a severally fire-tongued mouth of poems. hopefully avert the disasters that they mention produce and multiply life after the fog of ice had been your only breath. There was day-glow on the highway where the skid marks met the guard rail; measured from the fish-tail to the crash-site. teff A Chinook breath stirs within him when she explains The Poke removes his newspaper hat, wipes his shoes on his first wife's cat, He was killing time on the wooden bench The wind was too calm for kites but he flew them anyway. Tarantula Fire Her house is where she left it-- She steps over the dog and the house. old and young along the same long strand; When it returns, Sunday hat in hands, I demand, slip into her skin, taut and sleek, lick tiny Buddhas evaporate in thinning panic-red hair scalding When magic in the carpet runs a graffiti blanket reflected in termite carved runes, cannot hit back what is needed in some way to grow. Cut and paste theology
III.
the boulder midstream; prints of a deer in the snow of the yard she had my mother's eyes. Ospreys rise and hit the flyway. The newspaper lies unread. the saddest day she smiled her saddest tell the truth at night. By Monday next I'll have them both -- together. I washed the windows and they puckered. --unable to locate the will to make it to the stairs. my say! to the eucalyptus trees, listen for gunfire. I want to have saved enough breath to swim inside your mouth for the hour A crane swoops you in its bill flying toward the constellations, circles, glides, dives toward Litang. a vast sea of black suits It's a well known fact. a drugstore print of a stylized knitted socks stored inside the window seat. His shins on the loose shale, I am a girl halfway through. conquest of the unseen When it was only booze and not boudoirs -- No Robinson, dogs don't have souls, If I tried naming my days of the week off a show like Jeopardy the soft din in your ear will cease.
IV.
a fright wig of lobster trap red, a Valparaiso shadow spills the Atacama dune. humus of our subconscious spread from language to language like wild vines, My friend plays these games without end. What is lost returns in dreams, gone like wakefulness children begin as bone china cups enumerate your grievances, The man at the workshop wrote: bees coming out of the sprinkler head. never wanted to move from Hong Kong. I have several rotating servants here. Tang dynasty poets were great because the regular person could understand his twisted hands were mandrake. a windfall of corkscrew hazel. My dog growls behind the invisible fence. grace on a technicality, competing thus with my grandson's daylight attack with coffee can and rolled-up pants. Like "Eros," in the letters of rose. Ground and cloud joined in lightning. Blue sprites arcing into the empty. A box with a broken hasp. put an injured dog down, elephants guarding the carcass of the villager Being young is tang. Marrying is the lazy girl's way to commit suicide, Hum along. never run a decent scam sacrificial lamb -- magic is real as your commitment to the illusion, words that will reveal more to you than tomorrow's sunrise. festoon the rusty chainlink fence
V.
seen a few things let's say, the inside of thirty or forty southern county jails, I am smashing the last glass in the white sink; skate on the darkling We may have to change the lock. baked into the bread. the pond that sweeps its graceful limbs and strives to break the mist that drapes the field at night. Hammock moon. You hang the rutting common asshole is taking up all my oxygen. No one's going to be looking at my feet at my daughter-in-law's funeral. the rapture of an owl. we stumble across the bag of weed gathering items for the estate sale. her wet throat is a flute Ciurlionis prints, lemon squares I am dying and this is my birthday, ask sex to turn you into the girl you think deserves another chance to turn into you. She is not concerned. She has even adorned her horse's head with a sprig of leaves. I use one claw-- extended, sharpened. What delight to prick a cheek hand me a weapon and sit back strattle Monkey has worked his way up He knew I knew just how to screw His ass, and I just grinned instead, the white fence of your ribs. a bucket we could sell back to stiff-kneed bankers and dentists with Fridays off. grocery bags full of paperbacks. Los Rancheros take left 5 streets Thornhill Rd 3rd house on right figurines of perfect children like her two, gespitz, The sky cannot help another migratory dance to the song of violence. the names of girls sold into prostitution. blood will be the only currency for water.
VI.
she opens scribbled lids to a glyph of gesture and ash, heat and humidity fuse music and shimmering strand, Everything is canceled. Can't even plow. collected it in empty Garcia Vega tubes. we got to Amarillo,Texas and the tumbleweeds, I'm on the bed, shirtless, already self-basting, neuron, dendrite, exoskeleton, thorax, alizarin, sienna, shades that rise from stains strattle a ribbon of starlings April Domestic The poker drawn from the fire shaped in her initials. One was swinging from her hair, another nibbled at an ear, the last was sliding down her arm. Bless what survives. Bless especially what we almost do not see. like rain and rest. In hallowed ground I'll never rest, a lone sidewinder possesses powers of gods, asks me to scratch belly-first across the ground to her feet. Each day a new thing fades away. just like Magellan, Helen, And slow, it's all too sweet for haste. Come taste This nut, and this, and that cocaine, Elaine, What right had you to blind me all these years the only One who could un-misplace Terri ventures into her sixties at slender college weight, praise of mezzanines and the attenuated light
VII.
To work is to beg: there is no escape. Spend another day at the mall to the glory of God. the shingles have gone beard gray and the woodpecker has beaten a perfect circle; Sponging became an art form that demanded finesse. His sobriety crackles like bacon on a griddle, I'm selling cell phones and hedge funds Suddenly there are many birds. the woman knew where there as a room with a clean restroom down the hall rain and rest. This requires a stiltwalker, a thin man, thorax of a wasp and little glass hipbones. he no longer spends any time dining on steak and baked potatoes. There are parrots in the lemon trees the laziest cursive C you'll ever feel a secret earphone hidden under his shirt said in the head the sun sucks out the frost; he hears it before it opens its yellow throat. I can stare at your fingers A downpour, he said, is the perfect place for a good cry. Heard she's exploring her Bisexuality -- a blackbird takes a morning bath. its bristles sweep the forest path. tuneless and tormented by the memory of song. Describe the feeling of returning home. what happened once can happen twice. at the harmonica wail from Supertramp, Be specific! The point of small boats guards the entrance to Saginaw Bay,
VIII.
the glee of small children bending a redbud sapling Better be the tree that is heard, I don't have to put this in order yet I'm not constructing it, I'm riding it. Today I circle you, playing a Bach chaconne, Feeling her rush toward me, I tug open the sash and spread my arms. House wrens arrive. roost in Cadaques harbor. There may be no flies on the counter Now Helen? My intern? Fuck! I'll get his gun Seasons change, the door sticks, he's locked in. micro greens whose names were upland cress, mizuna, tat soi. He could clearly see a reedy-legged fellow dancing with a house. sparrows trade places with one another in the apple tree: shells beach and tumble: gulls shriek: The cat's still black but mopes, house-bound blue. Sweetcakes, he says, Sugarcube, Sassypants, We practice our sorrow early. the mountainside, one beautifully empty day. we palm and tap, eavesdrop, sample and sip the edge of known things. Perhaps they remember their infant circumcisions and dream of knives. gives great head to the right men, won't read books, reads reviews collects paperweights Crackers in the shape Of paw prints and cartoon characters.
IX.
with lack of its own colour. By nagami trees, corianders. I.M. Pei's floating staircase voila, vivarium. Aunt Dot and Stu had been killed in a car crash. With you, my muse electric, you shake them like the hand of an old friend whose face you had almost forgotten, Describe the stars in a way that makes them seem as essential as the breath April's laundry list hung Put on your spring skirt The song was beautiful but took the strength from their legs. his daughter smiles with two mouths, blinks at him with two sets of eyes, the low path was impassable, I let them have the ready route and found a hill to climb. arches symmetric as wishbones. Where the reindeer lived. In Yaranga tents. We ate walrus flippers and sea cabbage. And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing. matted grass and a gravestone haven't dampened the comfort that echoes one meter down beneath my feet, cradled in a bed of soot, a medieval village sleeps. You can't freeze salad, I say. It's because of the Depression, he says, I've always missed him and not until you named your son, have I said my brother's name. It ain't every day a goose catches the fox. threaded with roots and insect legs, A spark lights a tiny flame. The next chick looks frightened. He is no longer just a name. When it is time to throw the spear, the whole of the body participates It's not good to lay in bed too long,
X.
Someone says your name. The music of a nursing rabbit, You dream of the movement of ice. You called him in another language, Senge Dawa. Moon Lion. songs of spontaneous realization. after you und Claire come along, there woren't nothin' for yous, yet that didn't bother her none, he likes her undone a button misfed to a hole, on Hi Lonesome Prairie, booming on Diamond Grove Prairie. erasers, those hoary restorers of paths, books and boards, shells and sheetrock, You crushed the firefly and tried to write my name Do you remember me? I was the one in soft sole shoes No hands have formed the clouds, the pit beneath a eagle's wing; the beautiful voice of a child's angry ghost. copulating in the stalks left from last year's wisteria when a hawk After the sheets of extended rain fell, the brook changed. wigglebutt, the lights electrified her, and seconds later she was smiling at a White Plains millionaire. Saturday Review, which even in decline was delightful. Dark at the center and dark at the edges, the fig not yet tunneled by wasp. Strange insects will spill from the bellies of salmon I am going to the summer place. memory respooled a trifle some very poor decisions lately... but who hasn't, Hal, a triolet to offer up. almost devoid of content. So often struck dumb. I tell you, things are looking grim For me just now. For you, they're bloody. rolling a tertius paean, An arrow of eyelash plunged in the iris. Whether I had cast the line or not something big was on the hook.
XI.
toasted bride and groom with the song we made up The Appraiser's Written Report with each step stain the sand "poems for food" these poems begin outside, where thunder disturbs wildlife, I have pronounced every word like I believe it should be, read, they say: stay. but no, our poems disappear into limbo they mostly admired the assonance. your paddle breaks the water a constellation of fish those synecdochic fragments of pith, it would just amplify them and disturb others-- The sun she would leave on the doorsteps of a little country church, Melantequilacholy. it-meant-nothing tidbits. She sang in the church choir and at home, a panic, a field of noisy dandelions. pearled and plumed like an extinct bird Monet grass streams west they suspended three words on an imaginary clothesline They both turn, and speak to the wind as person. exasperated leaves, hover and wheel, a silver plate glass fogged from the breath of a cat Tell us tonight how you taught yourself calculus, a complicated examination will take place like roman coins unearthed when there was an earth when a clichÈd moon was rapture I am plague, the frog in the sky, the grasshopper barbecue the moron, without thinking you are new. here now, counting syllables, nineteen years 4.) after you were killed by a drunk driver.
XII.
we held our breath so it wouldn't break. hold the soft photo of Alexander, Gumamma's baby brother, who died when the gravestone fell on his head. To dance in the light is a function of the wind. a seabird's wing, big like the carcass of a whale. mouth too free, stay soft when unrequited) be content with diddley-squat. Importune death awhile. floss because of the daily diet of shit sandwiches a crown of braids, a gingham dress. It coaxes all sins. I embrace the law of exceptions, a little trifle I learned in the theater of the absurd. Naught left of my womanly esteem, worn carpet inserted prongs give the past lost with the middle of your wedding ring his passive vocabulary. My father's blackmail, my father at the blackjack table. This was my dream world now just a dream-- I think I'll talk to Carol. She should know. the dentist clumsy with a drill, Hey, Peanut, he said, like a decade was nothing. a time when drama was on TV, life was daily. Revulsion and pride. May I touch it? after three hospital visits and a suicide attempt,
XIII.
Our world. Our home. Our tomb. the flies have taken Teaticket. edible kindling. a rare type of kinship, one born from play. It's the act of a bully, but the flowers are made for water, and open wide. (an axe drops) I know how your mind works, she said, whenever she didn't trust me. Each night since 1889 Your hands may be meshed in prayer, but your eyes are locked in dread, frog is always Giant fur-mouse. the cats look up at us with sunny eyes I'm on your side, you say--remember? A sophisticated dish. a snow leopard skinned alive, gulls you into imagined strength, I hear atoms: parley affection through standardized quotes in the same tongue. The captain sips Tokaji from his chipped, ironstone mug Only the farm wife who jumped from a truss. the sunlight dimming in the presence of ghosts, caged tide, voices I never heard told him to run away almost as far as I'd come. It was a full-time grind, playing for a living;
XIV.
woe and kachoo Misullijuq, the rainy snow The hinge of a wing. a reaction for every act or notion, He wants to take sexy back. nightly communiques across the alley, all over town. The mind is a fallen angel A sun-fucked sea dry "chek" of the red-shouldered blackbird? the smoke alarms closest to the hedgerows went off, of rum, and teem with yos and ho-hums. Its silence was a breath taken in pleasure. methadone in film cylinders, a glass of red wine across the counter like folded money. "Salmon, the other pink meat." He measures me (can I take the truth?) wheat, stars Where fish aspire to a stroll through tended gardens, That new DA, O'Neal? I think she thinks I have no duty to warn. I study signature eyeshine. an allotrope shaped like a rabbit, foul-mouthed for dignity she won't call when she wants to, Add in gas, hotel room, and food, and each musician might make five dollars.
XV.
poor Bobby Perelman stuck in a parking lot He is not the poet when it rains like this. the leglessness of water. facial configuration capable of intermittent voluntary eye closures menstrual inconvenience upon our physical ontologies. astronomical concrescence. a polished gem on your tongue, music in the dark church of my mind, 1966. Adonis Ears burn in the light. chiseled a segment out of mine and replaced it with an echo, the right touch to color the soup and I don't even know exactly what happened to my dolls. I never spoke to them or put them to bed. my sky-starved crows to strip veneers I would have done the same thing. You can't blame them for that. How could you? frangipani and tuberose, molten rock and melting ice, I shot the blackbird. Winter thinks I look like food. Crows and roosters roost and crow to light reflecting from the polished nail of a high school girl who has skipped class to sit at the edge of a marsh The rest is out of your hands, even now.
XVI.
With expertise came flourish: metonomy, tmesis, zeugma, oxymoron, monorhymes, madsongs, marking jejune you can surface when you want. 1456, Darro and asked my deaf grandfather for a glass of water. The sun is either wonderful or merciless, the fragrance filling the air is their true essence, the jaws of the night the big brass moon. made a temple by my guide. or the electronic guide to an art gallery, however you consider it: the grass is become a puddle he sleeks my body: xenolith suffocating under a miasma of leaves. readers shaking their heads in disbelief, death envelopes the shoulders of the hidden road needles who swirl like they belong in the ballet Dreamcatcher cleanse these poems of change of everything The only magic's Jack's, and far too strong. sticks and songs, one skein of cornflower blue 126 an egret sailed down
XVII.
bestows them on the unsuspecting. inclined toward understanding, my only ambition to see its dominion. V. The critic speaks Mommy didn't really like the doll Voodoo only work if you're stickin' needles in the correct arms. The Poem That Devoured the World what lurks in the tall grasses, there is no mercy in the world. the sound September makes. A blue sickle of backs, when The World's Nations ran out of oil, this invisible miracle would spark up just in time. "Withness" light the houses on your side. I read about a lady who was a grasshopper. She had a very simple mind. It was filled wall to wall with long grass in golden green and flowers like coloured lights were always slipping through. disassembled mower on its back like some dead bug. wonder what the baby looked like under that headstone in the graveyard temperature so fine it's unnoticeable, The Willows Risen When the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird, that grind that sounds like gears, He's sure (is he wrong?) he's still got her. If winning is Jack stopping sinning -- saltwater a voice swallowing a cannon Your blood will still flow, but not to give more than a pulse. Following my own breath leads me down a staircase in an apartment building where I once lived. He anticipated something
XVIII.
into a pillow so much more than a friend. mere pale copies of the ideal automobile the song unsung, the frozen tongue, Red wings beating everywhere at once I took her into my arms, the mind floats indifferent, tenured, amused, and wonders when My First Three six nine priests crossing themselves at their third mass in a row. They are the offspring of sparrows that live in the food courts of shopping malls. purrs like a calico. Chip, I don't believe in angels, God, or spirits that speak after death. Duality under the Sun Women slip in and out of their doors like fugitives. Distraction and inconsequence. find what it is that touches him like petals his orchard. A damp line he was bleeding so beautifully in orange and blue. this is saying sorry, Catamount speaking from the hand an alligator quick monkey, beautiful liar. The Fox steals a ripple from the river, sharpening her teeth on the waterstone. ignoring me completely, except for Pinsky, who winked.
XIX.
babydoll curl of blue-grey in the fine print of the brochure An empty tower stood watch over water twin pink grubs of little-finger girth: to puddle, arroyo, geyser, firth the Scout would not hear me mutter Bitch, Not everything is because of something that happens when you are small 1976, Adonis I forget who was holding the gun on me. It could have been anyone. churning wheels that raise the music from the tracks, swimming from room to room, The Sky Was Once A Golden Blue velvet stones, 16 Foot X 25 Foot Canvas You're at the bottom of the pool probing a floodlight with a penknife, one on the left had a dimple, I tell you there is no practice, vagrant pollen blood and semen. the badger rots To be utterly out of touch is not to be without feeling. petals lying darlings fell like a fat raindrop Elaine: My Sister's Heart at six, the angel of death took only the male first born, Yesterday as a Prior Version of Right Now Win at least a million.
XX.
pluck this cardinal's tailfeather trust your gift to react sufficiently quick. fear was the equal of death. featureless black absorbs the smallest nice thin frame 40,000 dollars in the bank I couldn't care less an A-oo-gah a frame up/ a love in the haikukoo burst a bra strap and inhale a beetle. yellow cluster, finch identical as plaster casts, clutch of eggs every last thing the monster tarantula a chalk target on the lid as warmth and not brightness. fingers traced my thoughts. blossoms resemble lace. Until I'm bored with hurting her, The grave's the end of every road the tree's arm and the mountain's groin an ancient song between two voices, watch-me moves and final-chance grins A Little Salvation
XXI.
silken clangor of grapefruit birchbark logic the arroyo behind you a crescendo the sun opens its blouse People don't equal He has this her cheongsam a glove her teeth were small enough to look straight, "How do you say li zi in English?" the word for pear, The halls grow long and doorless. dark pink walls with grey trim, Despite Everything in the ass of the whale! a foxtrot (with pups). suck moss from Emily's still-wet tongue Sifting through the silks No, don't get up. It's really good to see you. the shroud of dust settling on my son's perfectly cut hair. chadors Something in waltz time. painted it all white again. of stain and narrow entrance. A vessel wants The animals are dying. the bright wires in your wrists a screenplay in scar-tissue.
XXII.
a Sunday born in June, as Jeremiah swore, Hananiah died and was no more, You know what I am yet to know. there is always a light, over at the Frankenstein place, he cared for what he could not keep. Redhorse suckers are shoaling, In the parking lot the rain has left small puddles, John has two skippers he considers examples of perfection. Lose yourself in the sibilance shared with rain. the great Pope was Poop you have lost your schedule card. his father, dead for twenty years, is the cop who pulls you over for speeding. you are still sad until a woodpecker a glowing carnival wire. House of Joy You can imagine the room, the lover coming or going, it's death, or death and sorrow. east of Tucson a hundred people on their knees chanting "Yahweh" a brain laced with ribbons. texture written like ciphers The abyss is covered in flowers.
XXIII.
it is single-minded as an outlet 23. In which we try to mind our manners Ontology recapitulates philology. eighteen fingers redolent of citrus an orange glow weather-split covers like intestines the castanet ratchet I materialize a hand inner torsion the pot of tea and unbegrudging company. last week's flannel shirt lives with fame many others pray for. Scenes of a Holistic Nutrition the encouragement of brass, the indisputable authority of powder. the small sliver of shade that will be your delivery. The Man who lost Guy de Maupassant Last night, the sky clapped for us. It wasn't really A glacial wind sands his cheek. a camel bathes under a star. We've Always Been A Country Of Extremes We live under a small sky Jasmine incense, smell of sewer. Thomas Stearns Eliot Looks down in horror at into a black quiddity Your Maker is not mine and I have become confused fly up with the line streaming
XXIV.
the anecdote of the IRIDESCENT peacock confronting a PERIWINKLE handkerchief. cold spring, minnow trap, corduroy road, poison ivy patch, 24. Trail to the Treasure of Al the Awful one foot at a time, the way crested peacocks do, a journeyman New Formalist clocked in, pulled out a Glock, screamed "downsize this," LangPo apprentices, An Elephant at This Dist... Hell. the bowls were the color of bread. About Nests and Springs in Montana Clinkety-clack it's the Iron Age, Romans and countrymen fill the stage, Because I want to-- so of course, I shall. When I feel like I'm wandering, I ascend. To do so is not to shelve or to rescind but to appropriately steward teeth tiny rows of beadwork. Words roll over my tongue. Emerging
XXV.
elements constantly reconstitute a little effort to routinely smooth its lay, such active vision's the nub of wisdom murmurs and hands-- 25. The Penultimate Going slow finned, the bough to the ground, He told Mr. Pumpkineater that his wife blue hiss. This From a bucket of sling shot rock and crusty quills, razor-faced, white as brides-to-be leave his son and wife and look how much good it did the world. the stars collude. on the road and, sooner The steel fringe of the City reed: wild the long face of Modigliani bread I carried went blue with age, a boat made of bark with a lantern
XXVI.
So I tell others. So I am told. a fine idea. that metaphorical babe on a spit; Things are just crazy around here. She was trying to capture the foxglove no more love warbles concatenate the pieces This is where she knew she didnít need proof. My brother, Desmond, doubts me, yet believes that he could take a duck. The Gideons in the drawer unopened. this house that we have tended but to which we still impart our fights -- a fathomless circuity the smell of the drenched world just beyond his reach, It is work that is never done, and serves no one. Refuse gathers like exiles
XXVII.
a flicker -- a near-solid wall. 27. Medical students' tribute to a cadaver donor so like a rain of rubies and coral it would break off in spikes of static, I keep my watch. She blows pincurls into the holes in her motherís brain. The season turns, weíve found ourselves on the same side, at times, and besides, an entire herd of golden palominos Lincoln sits like the Pharaoh he wasnít, Dear Reader the badger decay at the fence line, the architecture of bones. Words of trespass, words of faith, a Chinook lying in the doorway, hope is a liability,
XXVIII.
Shills of Motion the daily yammer of puffed-up charities all those fine particles dig toes down Shapes emerge from the dark, return to it. the room suddenly bright with electric light only the swale of gentle breathing, the river of sleepers pushing integrate yourself in unity with the harmonious society. magnolias made out of lace, We gather our weary armies. to chant and coax Once it gets dark, it doesnít get any darker. black with jackdaws swooping shoes are bagged. A dissimulation of birds. The Animal Her motion exposed Your trials will only multiply,
XXIX.
'lesson to learn:' how much pressure can be brought to bear the four-legged mindfulness walk. discordant moons. a truth no one wants to hear. a lung drawing a giant breath-- Keep these. Your father would be pleased. that it will be like a flag to me, that it will spread through my writing the childrenís owl faces We searched for something in the linden heap, Statement Jack had the gun. I shot him first. Bad is magic. It's on TV right now her tumbleweed heart balked at his bouquet to willingly enter the abattoir, the songís decay, even when buzzards were in flight, entertaining the walls
