play/no play

Building a More Efficient Home for Poetry

2007-08-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

play/no play is currently in the process of moving! profuse apologies for the delay, but please keep checking back for directions to the new web site and more great words coming your way sometime in september.

FEATURING: Andrea Rexilius

2007-07-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

The poetry and essays of Andrea Rexilius can
be found in the Denver Quarterly, P-Queue, Volt,
How2 and Cab/Net among others.  Her secret dream
is to become a Russian speaking trapeze artist, or
a French speaking tight-rope walker or both.

Envelope / Hem

Envelope

To be, to be made and structured. To be hollowed out and felled in. And ever on the
brink of furthering, ever on the brink of rapture. To rupture. To toil and burn in the echo
of outside. To envelop. To breathe in and hold as landscape. To lunge. To lean up
against the edge becoming. To pin a note in how the mouth expanding. To pin a map and
all its edgeless swarming body. To swarm again and whole.

Envelope

In the distance some small figure is wielding us self. Who we are will be met with light.
The woman removes an egg. .from her it is made. .enamel and motion. .this is
true. .have faith.

Faith. My face speaks of. In the dark my name fades. Remains.

Imprinted. .where seams surface in me. .describing what is inside. .what is white.
the self is surface lined. a broad seam stitch. .carrying over to place. . what surface
gathered at said edges gathered a name, a named place.

Envelope

Earth strikes the roof of my mouth; letters it certain part.
A stray scripture spoken. Faith does not act upon the body, as pulpit. Is what gravity is;
the voice in the vowel.

Certain parts of the body inhabit the world. A hem I approach. Teeth bite and bare the
tongue, hemming the tongue to its home.

______

[Arc the trellises: letters]

here will I spell me out
the world
shucked from my own skin

the whorled
fields a corresponding

portion of bone, exegesis

my life in this band of hemisphere

the edge an endless dwelling
exhales and moves back in my temple,

[She traces or transcribes upon the land]

She was captive in that land.

She saw captivity in that land she wore.

A fork in the road in the leg.

Another new dimension is manifest, blades of grass

stitch the skirt to earth.

“I wrote to depart and the small remnant became vagabond.

Millions did.

And saw the lord might be manifest in grains of pasture, eyelets

of wood.

Wood saw through the field of tree & the wilderness became restless

City.”

Seeing returned & she saw small insects where wood pealed back;

where words spoken nested in eyelids & she saw many towns destroyed.

[scene]

The Garden is seen as elsewhere; the bedroom being the location of the moment.
False house plants to cover us when blinds are not bound.
Our eyes, persecuted animals; in allusion: spheres in which all hope is vested.

Thus the vessel embodied is seen everywhere, then first to exile.
Nothing eternal. A small remaining
number of nature enclosed in boxes & lockets, lover.

______

Address / Hem

Address

Surface and dive down
what rising up erasing
relation no relation

I am the deer small noun.

in the forest
finite and of the waves
crowd me in my face
and the leaves leave
me to fashion myself

Address

How knot is what we build next to, to locate us and knocking create where to find such
door holding horizon on all sides of us. Who knew the world meant, what the world in it
meant. You single point.

Address

The common needle. .point hitches. .how to hold. .a seagoing

thimble. .the hook of water. .coiling the lead. .needle hitching the

slack worked eyelet. .seen on the selvage. .is to experience an event of

whiteness. .see blank notation at said margin. .and moor it there

Address

Small envelopes he sends
brim over in me.
I am aware
these things he is wary of
bind in me.

Small envelopes he sends,
calling out from distant shore.
I leave my dress on the planks
of the floor.

FEATURING: Chelsey Minnis

2007-06-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

Chelsey Minnis lives in Boulder, CO. Her most recent book, Bad Bad, was published by Fence Books.




This is a good thing to write…

Because it is a poem for money…


I have to write a poem with an indifference..

But it is a great indifference..


If this is a love poem then it is for you…



      ______



Because it is a love poem…

It is a #13 love poem…


This is a dollar bill in a jar…


And a trap for your sweet forelimb!

I call out to someone to read this.




      ______



This is soft work! It makes you weak…

If you want to write this you better write it like hype…



I like it like translucent leather…

And a gold tooth on a child…


And the dark wink of my mentor…





      ______



This poem is a wish-killer…


It’s like trying to smash the two-way window…

And trying to get broke by writing…


This is like telling someone wearing a gorilla suit you don’t really love them...





      ______





 c-pain 2

......................................................................................................................................................

........................................................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................

.. . . . .
..............................................I am really dull with all the life in me..................


 ... ... . . . . 

....................................................................   . . . . . . . . .  .. . .

.......................

............................................

but…


      ..................

.  ..................then gets wavy in myself............................................

 ........

  .........because it is so hy-

drangea .................................................

....

............... .......................................................   ..................................


  to be drunk..........................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................................................................

it is like.....
. 

.........translucent leather......


.............

and chandeliers on the floors..........................................................

.

.........    ......

......................   ...................and so melony......

.......................................................................................................................................

................     .......................

... ...  .

.............
 .......................like a paean..................................


... .       
..................................................................................and...............................

...............................................................................................................................

.................................. . 

.............................................................


..........................................................

........like an ice cream truck song.............


...........................................................        .

..............................................

..........................................or a ...



       
.............butter


......................................rosette......................... ... in the groin...............................................



...................


......

......................it is like          .......................twigs …are..  breaking...........right...........



..............behind you ...............................................      ..............................

...............

.......................

..... . . . . . . .    ..............all night long..     but...............

....................     ................

.... it is.....


....
....................................................................................the mongrel happiness that you can find.....


.............................................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................

............when it ................ 

............................................................................................................................

........................................................................................................................................................

............................starts to go around you like a ride...........................................................


...................................................................................................and starts.......

.........to.......

............................................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................................................

go dark inside like a plummet................................................................................................................................

......


.......................................................................



...............I know it is.......................................................................................................................

.........................................................a glass of black dirt................................................ . . . . . . 

.........................................................................................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................

........................

..............

but I am just getting drunk on it............




...............................because I like to get weak......................

.................................
..............


and...... 

......................................................................I love it like chamois.........

      ..........................................................................   
.
or ..............................................................................................................

.
bursting open.... ranunculas............and........................ . . .  . . .

.........................

.............................................................................

...............................................................  .....................................



smashing . . . . inside ..........



....................................... . . . . . .   ...............................................like a glass crotch.......................

INTRODUCING: Michael Wanzenried

2007-04-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

Michael Wanzenried developed an acute obsession with rust and dying towns from his life spent in Montana. He likes to construct poems that use lots of self-prescribed rules and restrictions. In the future, he hopes to have the confidence to refer to himself in the first person.

(click on pictures to enlarge)

From Permutations...

Permutation process

Permutation poems are constructed using an edited poem, a large grid, and an eight sided die. The poem is divided into lines with an equal numbers of words and then divided into stanzas that have as many lines as number of words in each lines creating little text-squares (think of an excel spreadsheet).

If the first word of the first line is located in, let’s say B7, and I roll a 4, that word would move to C7. If on the second time around I rolled a 6 that same word would move to B8. In this way the words of a poem are able to migrate across the page. The amount of dispersal the final poem has depends on the number of times you roll the die.

Other Poems

Door to Door

Doubt

A.I.A Ingredients

72 in2 of ½” x ¾” pine
4 wire nails
Art In America: March 2003, pg. 132 (third column)
Everyday Statistics: 1950, pg. 607-610
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates: 1955, pg. 769
2 other pages of random digits: source unknown
243 in2 of cotton fabric
Underwood typewriter
210 ft. black thread
31 ft. dark blue thread
watercolor—yellow
the dimensions are 27” x 9” x ¾”
note: A.I.A #1 and A.I.A. #2 are columns one and two of page 132.

A.I.A is a three panel visual piece that reconstructs the three columns of text that appeared in an Art in America journal (only the third column is presented here). I used some high school math, an old typewriter, hand-made wooden frames, and about 7 pages of random generated numbers. I was able to rewrite the text by first finding out how many times each letter was used in the text. I did this by typing the entire page into a MS word document and substituting each letter with a dash. The program would tell me how many replacements were made. Then after finding the ratio of letter use from that page I was able to assign to each letter a number of numbers from the pages of random generated numbers with the letter E receiving the most. One rule that I held to throughout the construction of this piece was to maintain every detail of the original page: punctuation, layout, even the yellow splotch that appears was present on my copy. I was able to methodically rearrange every letter of the page according to the sequence of numbers that appeared on the pages of random numbers. After rearranging all the letters (a seriously draining and emotionally upsetting process), I typed all the letters onto cotton fabric normally used by oil painters. The fabric was then hand stitched onto the frames.
This poem is meant to be read aloud and with much gusto.












Bridge


*

In the walking silences past breakwaters and piers
A faint, frontiered blue seethes against the map.
Drifting in & out of consciousness, words
every shade of earth and nocturnal welting line
Consume each trace and particle
Of the bodies pooling closer to the sun:
Dressing, undressing, and re- 
Dressing the splay of their letters bottled in
A sky pitched over the bridge.

Halfway across was as far as we got
Before being stopped for days
By a landscape we couldn’t improve upon.
The colors refused the sluicing of our mouths
And you insisted we fold the scenery in half
For a time when there would be no reds,
Only the picture of an endless sea
Pinned between your legs
Drawing breath from the nuisance of its moorings.

The sandy licks your organs make
Over the toilet—fecund, bailing stops.
An animal’s jaw unanchored  
Describing mercilessly
Things we found on the strand.
Never once did we try to raise a dirty potato
From the coastal soils, as if to say, “this is us,” 
Buried waist deep in another world
Rotating our hips back and forth.

FEATURING: Ben Doyle & Sandra Miller

2007-04-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

Ben Doyle's first collection of poems Radio, Radio was selected by Susan Howe for the 2000 Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets. His poems can be found in current or forthcoming issues of Boston Review, Tin House, Denver Quarterly, and Indiana Review. His new manuscript, Dead Ahead, is forthcoming from Ahsahta. He lives with his wife, the poet Sandra Miller, and their canine in Roanoke, where he teaches Creative Expression to tough kids—when he's not in Boise as Distinguished Visiting Writer. Doyle co-edits the Kuhl House Books contemporary poetry series of the University of Iowa Press.

Sandra Miller's first book, Oriflamme, was published by Ahsahta Press in 2005. Selections from her new work—Chora—keep popping up in Aufgabe, Verse, Crowd, La Petite Zine, and The Canary. She teaches on one of those one-year things at Hollins University, where she lives on Maggie's Farm with her husband, the poet Ben Doyle, and their dog, the dog Ronald Johnson. The founder and editor of an international journal and press of some repute, Miller is also a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Boise State and a recent recipient of the Paul Engle-James Michener Fellowship.

From The Sonneteers:

The Sonneteers (a 50 "sonnet" sequence, a demi-corona) were constructed between August 2004-December 2004 as part of a relationship-experiment (ongoing). The 1st Sonneteer spontaneously combusted in the apartment of Biswamit Dwibedy, who had a Shakespeare sonnet in his typewriter. Turning this sonnet 90 degrees in the typewriter allowed space for the birth of the Sonneteer—with each of us writing alternate lines, messing with rhyme scheme, playing with the instantaneity of the art object-verbal object as a performative mode. (In the case of the first sonneteer, someone was reading from the book of Revelations in a thick brogue...) In the ensuing sonneteers, ink was spilled, more typewriters were deployed, and simultaneous sonneteering occurred. A dialogue emerged not just between the writers and their slant-rhymed couplets, but also between the found-art-papers and the texts. We're particularly attracted to the dual notion of the "sonneteer" as a sonnet-writer and as a shoddy poet, and sought to push these boundaries in our multiple resistances to form and regiment. We're grateful to Biswamit Dwibedy for the initial party impulse, and for many of the papers. Other papers have been constructed and generously contributed by the sonneteers themselves, as well as Sarah Doyle, Scott Inguito, the Toyota Company, The New Yorker, a jump rope, a slipper, Sandra Bullock & Ben Affleck, with cameo appearances by Srikanth Chicu Reddy and Louise Glück.

Sonneteers are also appearing in Area Sneaks, OxMag, Disaster3, and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets.

(click on images to enlarge)

FEATURING: Adrian Kien

2007-03-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Adrian, meet Adrian. Adrian, meet Adrian. Hello. I live in Boise, Idaho which isn't too far from Adrian where I live. In Adrian? Yes, but sometimes on the out skirts too. Sometimes I writes poems inskirts too. I lives with Kelly Packer and our two cats, Blixa and Sylvie.

(adrian can also be found @ BlazeVox, Action/Yes and HoboEye)












Flat Light

and one light settles into the ripple of the body’s length with no settled plan the town
echoes its emergencies green grass beneath snow in the silent sleep light the military
graves numb go mute to any outer inner sense
                                         here is my hand but not really                                              a raven circles
the ravine climbs the ridge blue and red flickers flickers off

a distance = to a time of day
                                              say a
                                              slight breeze
                                              the word Idaho
                                              is
- - -
the unconscious spectrum










3-2 8:30 a.m.

remember a mountain to the hand

a body tangled to bodied hills

where
mountains describes snow
at the waist of 

an exchange
of sound

how a hand made a shadow
how the father was a son someone
                             storm
                             wind eye ripped

a lip just touching a breathing frame
 corporeal in its inhalation

heaped upon belly
a valley where to be
                                            young
                                            air
                                            you
                                            hand
                                            disappear











About

I go off
into leaves
in a flipbook
succession of pages
without numbers
just how
without words
can I learn
to decompose like that
not me but bursting
from a father tree
coughing and spittle
a new creak where
a branch was going
can I eat back into
the worm that feeds me










every which way

I said, Are you here?
And you said, yes, you said, I am here.

         ... and I grew where you were 
         from every fingernail
         each shed hair and plucked whisker, yes
         but more every spit and sweat droplet
        every manure was myself
        an earth self we shared
        I was each blood cell
        equally spread thin and deep at
        the earth’s pulse from mother to father
        to dirt and to sunrise  skin
    
        And from space
        they saw me in you on their screen
        a yellow pixel
        next to a blue pixel
        in a green pixel that was water
        in our mouths marked with our mouths
        the last water on the planet
        passing between our lips wherever










Without I am without

On the sounds of Saturday Morning at the threshold of Boise and the Foothills, the
engines, the waterfowl, strangely German, guttural, not only digestion, but other internal
and necessary organs. Discussed.

the things of the horizon – out there at the constant slope
possible air
a brown expanse to be dead in
                                                      in the stomachs of grubs

ach a roaring (of strangling) dawn
now whittled down to its di di
immediated made of a throat in me
down ‘neath the feather down
a snorted comeuppance hill to here
to hear the horns in a v an r
as a vapor            the sun
                               the sun in my lungs
be beneath
the migrations of fowl – their tongues
where my fingers were
                                               an amber eye

a cell passes for one self mit hands
mit spray of spit mit mallards
CO2 O2 CO2 O2 CO2 O2 CO2
transmit from a bodily tower

FEATURING: Karena Youtz

2007-03-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I am internally unable to reconstitute images from the transferred, digital realm. My current (sorry!) theory is that the electrical field in which the “net” exists is too vast and dispersed to carry any specific impression to my provincial brain. Overload, over-communication. I choose the following poems because they stand complete in themselves, yet entirely out of context (home occurrence). Like me in the binary edict, they are displaced, stripped of their lives and persons (in bodies of longer poems), yet remain. Karena Youtz and these poems hail and hello blog play/noplay.




 ________



Not abstract war: suffering
we can’t accept like
not going shopping
out of respect     How uncomplicated
not to shoot everyone & unfair to me
to think of anyone







    ________







“Individual” today too
I must be joking with myself and not getting it





    ________





Where the ocean melts the black wet wall
childhood items
for the ritual being me
rest enclosed in their small green case
Either I no longer or constantly
perform this





    ________






With the universe
become one
which requires equation






    ________






THE VIRGIN

Destroys herself by knowing herself






    ________







Speech!  Speech!  from paradise and into
paradise, meaning experience

FEATURING: Daniel Stewart

2007-02-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

Daniel Stewart’s first collection of poems, The Imaginary World, was published in 2003 by Wolf Peach Press. His poems can be found in Arsenic Lobster, Crab Creek Review, Puerto Del Sol, Skid Row Penthouse and Talking River, among others. He teaches creative writing as part of the Writers In The Schools (WITS).

Daniel will be reading @ the Mouth & Thistle reading series in Boise, ID @ Satchell's Grill on Saturday, March 10th @ 7pm: be there, have a beer and be happy.

Singularity

Fired from God’s .45 she tore a hole
in me black as a crow’s wing.
She found the universe dull as a sitcom, the laugh-
track louder with the voices of the dead than October
rain’s gallop across the roof, and so
collapsed. She languished, lilac, leopard;
I prayed to prowl with her, prey with her, lick
blood and meat with her, but God sucked
my tongue into His mouth and
bit. Rain, you are song when I long
for arms; the birds tuck heads
under wing, wings are weapons, like the wind
in the leaves; wings are choices, like the sea
throwing up stars on the sand. She tore
a hole in me the size of God
so heavy with gravity not even light
escapes me.

Against Flight
(previously published in Puerto Del Sol)

The sorrow that is night

sings deep into me

teeth and all—

drunk. The lake a blackened
eye. Waters gasped
against shore. Stars fluttered, moths pinned
against the sky’s black mat, with wind
wound like our fingers in each other’s hair,
wind bleeding ghosts from blur.

Once upon a time I stitched wings
to your back, folded a crown
out of tinfoil to stun the coils
of your hair and prayed
for salvation. Imagine, me along side
a King upon a throne in a kingdom
all our own. Our sun was a flower
made of sugar and saffron; it burned
only figuratively.

Love was slur was shadow was howl was
ache. Was whiskey breath, smokey
and warm, lips licked
to shine; was the crown of your hand
upon my head dragging me down
into the deeper dark
at your lap—

The wisdom that is flight beat

out of me like wings—

Blind with rising light, we faced
the autumn dawn. Gulls stirred and flew, cried,
cried, circled, flew.

A Particle Is Also a Wave
...We see that even individual, particulate electrons, moving to the screen independently, separately,
one by one, build up the interference pattern characteristic of waves.
—Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe

...the universal fabric agape with particles like mouths
that hunger only when you feed them
smile only when you seek them...

black holes where your eyes
should have been. Sun
roared over us in a wave...

light the sin skin lusts so after
to the flesh is simply damage...

...the boy’s bared bicep bound in barbed
wire hackneyed as a crown of thorns...

Never in sorrow
Did Great Grendel’s fangs
Burrow through gristle
And bone for lust of the marrow...

Remember that brick I betrayed
your window with? Squint
and it’s a bouquet a throb with bees...

...experience is not solid. It is a choice,
like picking socks to wear in the morning...
Grendel’s favourite pair were red, they kept his scaly
Taloned toes the warmest, and reminded him of human
Blood, his favourite kind, though fresh birthed
Kids could quell his thirst in a pinch...

it is a wave of possibility...
After, I am in two places at once...

...quarks, gluons, electrons
the petal-fragile blossoms of reality flower
only when sought...

How Godlike...

one with you
one without...

Let down the coal-dark
coils of your hair
Veronica let it fan
out over the floor
of the dawn...

After the flame licked
its oil, soiled
its wick...

a mote
in a cathedral
spidering down a shaft
of light

After what fires me
passes out of me
will my soul split sky
like a vapor trail
Will I stitch void at shuttle speed...

pinned deep in the dark...

...matter that is the cheek
of God...

a grain in the numberless glitter...
shaken off my sin like ash...

dust sways with a breath...
dazes in the dazzle...
dust only dead
skin shed...

my shadow
my atoms
wound in wind...

empirically possible to observe the particle in two places, not the particle cloned but the same
one in two places at the same time...

Atoms make up only a sliver of the universal pie. The rest
is a dark heavier
than the stars its gravity
twirls into galaxy...

Experience is a choice we made
before we had a mind to choose ...

dark matter dimples space where stars drag down...

a muscle nestled in its cave of bone...

Like a memory shared by two
people at the same moment...

I exist in two places at the same time...

Sup from His Righteous
Tears Veronica
the stain of His Sweat
is the map of the stars...

one with you one without...

FEATURING: Brandon Shimoda

2007-02-04T14:08:00.000-08:00

Brandon Shimoda is the second child of an Irish-Scottish girl from the west coast and a Japanese boy from the east coast. He has lived in both of their hometowns, and has found them lovely, and completely unmanageable. A few of those sentiments can be found in recent pages of Verse, the tiny, Aufgabe, Xantippe, MiPOesias, and elsewhere, as well in the editorial leanings of the New Lakes reading series, CutBank, and Octopus Books and Magazine. In the summer of 2004, Brandon moved, with Aimee, from North Carolina to Montana, where they are currently remaining.

Brandon will be reading at the Mouth & Thistle reading series @ Satchell's in Boise, ID on Saturday, Feb. 10th. Be there or Beware! (e-mail for details)

from O BON

dog and monkey and pheasant





mouth accepts a peach
        aright


the ember wracked edge
of the turbulent field


armor tasting of millet
dumplings—dog
and monkey
and pheasant

recognize
our ornament?     


I put my fist
through it I pull
it out, the prodigal stone










•


war in the hackberry

reticent gate

attenuate
navy blame I
do side with the trees

would have been proud
who moved as they spoke
the trees spoke












felt animus
       field

or
       brain, branches
     shaking fur
loose











Without to Move or Speak



—      w      —

—      en      —


the fate woods
to the north eastern sea

aureole of open cathedral
the strontium isle

the corpse left
out of articulation       

will stay among us
let’s hope not

the afterlife
the stomach

and shroud removed
from the flash portrait

whilst coming to life
with nothing in your mouth
nary muscle













•


not afraid of the chestnut
   
     bears that brings
to your land             hirsute sounds

       themselves at home


       the feather bed
     rose

      damask song

palanquin

    how pale
the fawning scalps
       beside the polar
   mahogany










the Tsuzumi Horse



The snow, dear beacon boy, is falling




      crystal

    casemakers
spread

    the walls
enflamed
      by motion lights
    rare
horses strung
      from the rafters
    in rows
of low-tones
      laureling

the sky      Do not
          move


          girl
        worm
    within
          the stabling      Will

    I be
that
      filly hung

the salem night
      to canter
    once 



and where
would we
have gone
at that hour


with what body?










Irradiant



In one week from now
you will be seen anew

though the light will catch

you incorrectly

INTRODUCING: Grace Egbert

2007-01-13T19:58:00.000-08:00

Grace Egbert was born in Silver City, New Mexico, one of the purported birthplaces of Billy the Kid. She now lives in Missoula, Montana where she is working on an MFA in Poetry as well as teaching Composition 100, taking digital photos and practicing domestic mysticism.

SWEARING

Thank you for the iridescence, the glassed-in wings, the green nomenclature.
Thank you for oil that suds, for glowing bones and false lava, for basements of déjà vu.

I still remember that iguana though, fat as bass and split open on the road.
I remember the years of aluminum, spearmint, all shorn and glossy as a carousel.

I have spent too many of my own faults on you, I suppose, have asked for life
To disappear when it is gone, for absence to be less than itself.

I am not opposed to gills or spores, nor to the hammock of larvae we shall call home.
I am not opposed to the condor’s return, nor to the taste of lamb.

Say again, grace—
And I will let the ingot in the sand, the parceling of feathered iron,
Will let go of the other panning deals I proposed, those threaded bolts of restraint.

I’ll hum for you, pretend stars are pinholes, pinwheels, pupils—

LANDSCAPING

In strains of sod we lay, reticent despite subterranean trust.
Like this, we need a place, a you and I, a hand-me-down set of utensils,
and speech for our dumbth.

Row by row, we deserve what we have craved—sunlight.
Still, in nights, like the heat of a bulb held in marbles,
some leopard waits, outside confidence.

Like this, porosity yields its chronic opening, even as it succumbs,
as we do, to the clamp and prune, the slice and hedge.

In nights, you rearrange yourself according to my mass, volume.
The ceiling hovers in us—pigeon, iridescent cataract.
I magnify your fields of darkest purple, root my little roots to you.

Our cells are spades unto themselves, numbers silver as faucets.
Each tinsel precipice expects a continuity, a looping, geranium comfort.
It is there, you wake and say—

CAROUSEL

Rabbit hair,
Empty elm,
Rocking chair—
What lights you?

The mirror’s foil flecks
       into a sepia topography,

Coordinates of melodic color parallel
      grams of prayer           In this place
      as in the olden days    you cast pebbles
      set nickels and wishbones onto train tracks
      as proof of time.

Between the slatted ribs
      that hold the back of you, rocking
      a new constellation appears, and in it,
      you, vibrant as a fearful horse’s eye.

In the curvature of a sea-foam wall, a crack
      and in it, gold-leaf         You are witness
      to the smallest fire, the only rule
      which tenses as it approaches.

There is violence in light.
There is violence in luck.

Where inside you is a flat thing?
Where inside you is a reflecting pool?

You cannot be at once
      eyes      on every side of a round thing
                    turning thing.

You turn, swallow a golden coin, golden fish.

The old elm fills with crows,
       liturgical silhouettes chanting threats
        —wind, pendulum.

You are not afraid.
You are a carriage,
      tendrilled and blossoming against heat death.

2006-12-20T19:57:00.000-08:00