like
fruit. Here, too, is heated.
Shahâs tanks are entrenched. First we thrashed
ourselves. We roared and got excited.
Mirrors have to function as ovens. You see them
from the road. On the machines producing
dreams. Some read between. The perfect
form springs up like an ear. I know
a chiropractor who can pull out your arm.
Five centimeters out of your shoulder.
Joints crunch. No need for oil. You spin
as you please. You leave when the tool falls asleep.
Avenues
Invent a jacket for wearing out.
From a heap, a terrarium, little hairs.
From harnessed little ponies
and snorted snow.
Bitumen sits on stamps.
Whole corridors of sculpted
chewing gum underground.
Â
Between seven and eight you can travel with a basket.
With a songbook, a flower bed, as you please.
You can dance with a puppet.
Silky hen, I stuff dollars into your mouth
to refresh the blood of your guitar.
Weâre happy
and we beam when we leave work.
Dislocated, Circulating
Scrubbed hands, a goblet, a goblet,
a column and a dripped heart.
At the cross thereâs a stole and a signet, agave.
When sliding as on silk, white sheets
or linen, and a rotor flutters.
A mole sags under the soil.
He completes slits in the air.
Women yell, roll up arms,
does he make up for the fall of six million bison
over the cliffs of the Grand Canyon?
How many filaments are in the blood?
Or potato blossoms, blossoms
of pumpkins, blossoms of raspberries?
Organs shout down.
The cash box is iron.
Butterflies smack when they rise up in hope chests,
shoulder to shoulder, in the dark.
Did he slide?
Did grief produce juice?
Did he leave a trail like a snail,
only he went a little faster and not so
slowly?
Where was he intercepted?
Did they bury him without humus?
âFast,â he whispered.
âBrooklyn, this is the skin
cream.â
Car
The car is oily. Shutters in sleeves
rush. Trees crystallize, their juice
disputes the shutter. In history there are snails
and stepped-on snails. The dead and those
whose mouths we stretch. The juice costs.
The mower scores a salary. Can I catch
your tail and put you on the bus?
In big cities people donât walk
hunched. Yesterday I saw a cab driver
shot. On Third Avenue, at
Thirty-first Street. People interrupted
their reading. The young were worried. The police
were alert, as if they would train all night.
The air in the bus turned fresh.
Odessa
Youâre lazy, Fedor, stupid and godfearing.
If you look at the bottom, you donât see crystals.
Crystals are bedsprings, they have noddles
Â
in their robberies. As crooked as sea-
weed. It sways, sways and doesnât go down.
The water levels it. Crystals are mouths
Â
of sweethearts. An agave is cut down with a hatchet, too.
A stomach, a sweetheart, an artichoke.
The neighborâs hand, clad in plastic,
Â
cleaning up dog shit. Weâre in front
of Barnes & Noble. In front of the pyramids.
Across the street you can buy wine,
Â
and when going to JFK and changing
at Howard Beach you watch
whales or sea elephants again (fish
Â
that flash) for which the artist drew
gold pears, beards that reach
to the airborne planes and to the depths of the sea.
Offspring and the Baptism
Canada begs oneâs butter. Everyone is in
the clearing. Godfather crouches, heâs tender,
he tortures. The roost is mute. Iron shod
Â
I come. In the conical hayracks, in the intelligent
bull. Rustling massages the sky. The cellar
squats beneath itself. Seed undulates from the sphere.
Â
Lambâs lightning utters the thought.
Sperm is behind the drawers, behind solace, love
is a red witness. We rented rivers
Â
and channels and tunnels. We travel a little
stall in the wheat. I wet and splashed on you
on the raft as you daydreamed,
Â
sheltered on the Gangesâ smooth surface.
Did I come from lime? Did I make you
juice with murders? Glue myself to the little
Morgan Parker
Kelley Armstrong
Heather Graham
Ron Hansen
Sally Mason
Chrystalla Thoma
Deborah Bladon
Ariella Papa
Kevin Barry
Sean Williams