Under the Sign by Ann Lauterbach Page B

world
    corrected   I am very sorry stop me at any point
    down below captured         Roger Federer
    the world allows you ask   what is this world
    clarity     a procedural game not   if then
    not     consequential     openly
    distributed   stop me at any point   motion
    transparent       you can see a match       pass
    to pass     Roger Federer       or hear
    the noise of bees               oceans of bees.
    to Nick Keys

MEANWHILE, STORM
    All these     concrete     things
blown about
    habitat of improvisation
    heavily adorned
    Â                          phenomena       do not grasp
    motion
unmoored
    under the catastrophe tent
    limb rocked
pictures
    had been
root-bound
    Â Â                  or truculent   not following not how
    the brown lisp
tunneling up through spawn
shorn
    and disobedient
as if duplicating
    not the stiff buck
not journalism
    pecking at our wares
and the beautiful illusion
also spawns
    sea in cloud
basking on its throne
    film trashed
in the forgotten
    as the already
known
    deception
in the black hall
    the relinquished sequence
abundant with numbers
    bitterly loaded
    patched on to the original
sent out as flood.

IL PLEUT
    And the ghosts of Galileo
and Apollinaire
    are meeting in a room
reserved for those
    in mourning for
acts of insight
    that link
perception
    to understanding.
They inhale clouds
    that promise a more
thorough oblivion
    than mere death.
There’s a knock at the
    horizon. Someone
has come to join them.
    She is clothed in
white and,
    like them, is
invisible to them.
    She speaks slant
lines only the birds hear.
    to Ron Padgett

DOMESTIC MODERNISM
    A chair
    and a painting
    are in love
    they resemble
    each other
    this happens
    rarely
    it takes a
    long time
    for a chair
    and a painting
    to fall in love.
    One of them
    is geometrical
    and slides
    across curves
    against
    a black ground.
    The other
    is floral.
    The floral
    once had a
    fraternal
    twin rug
    but it was
    exiled.
    to Anselm Berrigan

UTENSIL
    Track the quick-footed more .
Slack crib, fluid in another
mystery. Repeat after me.
    There was a form after all
but not recollected.
Never look back. Do not sleep.
    Skinny little day. Shadow
under the streetlamp.
Girl slender also, girl advent.
    Repeat after me. Turn
slowly to look back
to where the footprints were.
    Seek brevity. Don’t look down.
There are some evolving stones.
The sky? There is no sky
    only the task ahead.
Ahead, the easily erased.
Repeat after me. Count her
    astonishing steps, feet
in snow, feet in clouds.
Do not look up.
    Cold ricochets a blistered void.
We’re in the ghost field now
driven across the drain bed
    into the bowl of a spoon.
Things collect. Drops, etc.
blown into images, pink and red.
    Don’t look away. Do not sleep.
Repeat after me. Never let
her hand touch your mouth.

HARBOR SONG
    The long elation of our candor collapses in a small yard.
    Backwoods, incessant beats. Backwoods, the very nerve of fidelity.
    But say something else. Say the graphic doodles
    our condition into froth in the arguing hills over there.
    The days perish, wanting simplest ties.
    And the flexible branch lifts and falls, a kind of wave.
    Sooner or later we will enter Abraham’s drum
    and the wet slide of his hair
    will abolish our simple roomlike conditions.
    The invisible slope will drain into drops
    while Abraham beats and beats his forgiving set.
    Are the ancient songs contested? Are we too long
    in the cave, on the island, in an insular, petty drift?
    Questions are stained cups. The heart skips a beat.
    Abraham wanders off in a mood of melancholy triumph.
    The others, his mistresses, huddle on the floor.
    His mistresses are part of the inventoried world:
    they can be counted, they can be sent away
    to join others, parts of others, they can be treated
    like sentences in the inventoried