Woods and Chalices by Tomaz Salamun Page B

like
    fruit. Here, too, is heated.
    Shah’s 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.
    We’re 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 there’s 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?
    â€œFast,” he whispered.
    â€œBrooklyn, this is the skin
    cream.”

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 don’t 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
    You’re lazy, Fedor, stupid and godfearing.
    If you look at the bottom, you don’t see crystals.
    Crystals are bedsprings, they have noddles
    Â 
    in their robberies. As crooked as sea-
    weed. It sways, sways and doesn’t 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 neighbor’s hand, clad in plastic,
    Â 
    cleaning up dog shit. We’re 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 one’s butter. Everyone is in
    the clearing. Godfather crouches, he’s 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 
    Lamb’s 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 Ganges’ smooth surface.
    Did I come from lime? Did I make you
    juice with murders? Glue myself to the little