the fire, when started, out
near soon as started, so violent it flared …
Else in a wider cage, concrete, with others
clawing their way up out of breath,
the mist falling as fire and raining
down at the breath of men to drown it.
But—back of that, a border, crossed
sooner rather than later. It opened
a paradigm of borders from which no dream
or even thought might ever issue whole
without some line across it. Would mean
no breath of peace, ever, not even once
in a whole lifetime—because the line
had to be reached, was not reached yet.
(Star sitting with whole record
burning on the inside: books,
writings, pictures, photographs
and souvenirs: no single stitch
of cloth to wear might catch
a decoration pinned to it. Smiles:
breath has triumphed after all,
and recognition. Closure not yet).
Rapport of empty shell
to the great void so much described,
so touted, little proven? Were best
perhaps that ignorance be blessed,
declared most sacred of all voids—
sink finally to silence, recognized
fine ash, prime quality, best devolution
of every fire, even the devastator.
Winter star in the skylight, no
slouch, informing shell he slides
toward obliteration. Terminal
daylight status. Age begins.
Proverbial Drawing
Peter Cole
This world is like a ladder, one descends by it and another ascends.
—Midrash Rabbah, Ruth
I. HOW FAR
How far should he reach—
the line extends—knowing
it’s far from sound approach,
rung by abstract rung to heaven?
And where in relation to here
is there? Cut off? Is that right?
Or maybe it’s light he’s after,
or only a view, height
and distance from threats below,
which the ladder offers.
No! It’s all in the picture,
which this one echoes:
“I want, I want,” said Blake.
“I can’t, I can’t,” said the fake.
II. A RIGHT ANGLE SUPPORTS US HERE
I don’t understand, this cloud
which should rise, hangs
heavy and hovers. This leaded
whiteness mingles,
disperses dark and summons
at the same time the same.
There’s trouble there, but a platform
of sorts as well. You came
for a view of the cloud.
OK. Weather the storm.
III. THE LINE
This is harder, lower,
both more resolute and remote.
Nothing in the way of help here.
And so your spirit
floats there between … what?
Always between … That’s it.
That’s how it is: not quite
a jutting out as a fit-
ing awkwardly in.
Unavoidable. Usually
invisible. A not so fine
line inserted—see
it?—in everyone’s air—always
everywhere.
IV. IT’S TRUE
It’s true, but funny:
Time is honey.
V. THE HOUSE, THE CLOUD
In a desert a dwelling—
in the dwelling a desert?—
an encampment (an end to wandering)
with always a cloud before it,
by night a fire, and from it
stories emerged. The dwelling itself
had angles, and order, and a pitch
to its symmetry: There were books and shelves
of a kind, and when things were good,
it seemed there was more
air within than without. The cloud
held, it would hover,
for what sometimes felt like forever,
and they’d forget. But then it would lift,
and again they would wander, and remember.
Such was the house, the cloud, the gift.
VI. THE WRONG ANGLE RIGHTED
Once upon a time, there was a skyhook
that didn’t quite exist.
It was the stuff of legend, though not in a book,
and its story was frequently told, to trick us,
and others like us, when we were kids.
Suspended, somehow, from above,
it would lift our tent up over our heads,
creating a perfect complex peak: a roof.
Then it could be removed.
What it would hang from, we didn’t know,
or try to. But the notion compelled …
and so we were sent off, usually in pairs, to go
from camp to camp and ask if we could borrow
their skyhook. The man in charge always knew
how to answer: We lent ours out.
It’s two camps down, half-a-mile or so through
those woods. He’d point, and we’d trudge on, grumbling,
in search of that wondrous device,
the last word in wilderness dwelling,
which would make for us that immaculate crease
and yield, over our heads, a prize ceiling:
that weightless, matchless, unnerving and skyey
legend-like feeling of being,
at last, held up from on high.
Splinter
Fanny Howe
When I was a child
I left my body to look for one
whose image nestles in the center of a wide valley
in perfect isolation wild as Eden
till one became many: spirits in presence
yes workers and no workers up on the tops
of the hills in striped overalls
toy capes puffing
and blue veils as yet unrealized in the sky
I made myself homeless
on purpose for this shinnying up the silence
murky hand-pulls
Gray the first color
many textured clay beneath my feet
my face shining up I lost faith but once
(theology)
*
To stay with me
that path of death was soft
this pump’s emotion
irregular, the sand
blew everywhere
My hands were tied
to one ahead
driving a herd to the edge
(mother)
*
She said I said why
fear there’s nothing to it
at any minute
a stepping out of and into
no columns no firmament
Most of each thing
is whole but contingent
on something about
the nearest one to it
*
Confused but moving
the only stranger I know
has a bed a blanket
a heartfulness famous
for hypocrisy
When she’s not trusting anyone
she leans her crown
upon her hand
snowslop all the way to the grating
before lying down
in a little block of childhood
(one hour for the whole of life)
and her book to record it
*
Was the chasm between her mind
and things
constituted by the intellect’s catalogue
or by the presence of senses
(around her face
objects fall into special functions
tangled loops against conc
rete walls
moonish nuclear fission capped with molten gold)
or by a sticky subatomic soul
*
See how this being at the neck and bowel
gives the head and groin a taste of hell
that seeps throughout some nervous systems
all senses battered and enflamed
where the soul drinks disabled
and attacks only a she a she can see
who smiles in dreams between clenched hands
sobbing from wanting to win her pity
her in the born-hating
thing she finds there living
*
(Skin is what I she and they see when we see feelings)
Not I but a she-shaped one
over a fluid frame
sized to capture what comes in
agony that heaven doesn’t begin
(to know the soul imprinting is in pain)
*
Short of being nailed but sure of being labeled
now my name is forced now her name is first
into my ear my hearing her not being
here so I will know that this is the hour
when I will have to hear her
named and cringing rise
to the utterance
as my own excruciating presence
*
Very pain it came first
through my eyes
they were so compressed
I could still see
forms that will never be
eliminated and illuminations
and words whose imprint
(branded in agony)
still can’t be interpreted
*
Coal is the first sign of a wreck
that your face may blacken
with bliss of the night
Recognition
You can hide
from whoever is red enough
with force or sex to make you sad
*
The history of the deafeated
Eternal lie
as if to prove
the principle
root of the verb
to falsify
is life
itself an excess
since whoever is
identified
is already buried
while staying still
will show what nothing is
*
So if her skindeep faith
could stay intact
and the original forgery is genetics
and lies increased belief
then was her brain always seeking
the right word
to show that consciousness
does die in places
out of range of her own flesh
Last night I hated her
when I was what she saw in her mirror
and rage can only be appeased by praise
(the winning world backs in on you this way)
*
Does she mean what she says
or do statements form on her lips
Does she mean what she says
or do statements rise to her lips
If it is she then I exist
but if the words are mechanistic
then they can only be read
by reversing images
(the urge to hurt her emerges)
*
She grew to dare herself to murder that which worked to murder her
and murder what was birthed to murder her as I also aspired to murder
slaved and longed to murder her name my own murderous member
This way my always unquiet mind would clear its one evil
would not go to sleep insane
After all should I become a fate like any other not if she can remember
not if she could reconnoiter those faces better faces
now strained through her hate where a woman among them wonders
Why can’t I be like her and hate her
*
(The globe is a brain
It always believed it had no right to life
Its father was its mother
After the blessing came the naming
and accounting for the birthing order)
*
Where I grew life
and died as a little apple
—forget nipping and chewing—
I stopped she dropped
beside an especially long worm
the balls of her feet aching
somewhere out in the rain
one of those rains that blink until dawn
with only the eyes behind them
*
Depressions in the sea
a heavy day
unbecoming anything
after the hope
that drags behind
the one she doesn’t want to see
or waves away
cruelty always more credible
*
The holes in our haloes
widen the higher we die
(a light snowfall
the airport stilled)
And just a pane away from a face
one glove is waving
All our provision gone to waste
*
So the first shall be lost
and the zero before it
and the weight of faithless skin
shall thicken its authority
in a mind fired by a spark
whose intake of breath is automatic
until it isn’t
*
Winter spears
its buds of snow
until a white rose
bleeds gold and trembling
and barely visible
(artificial)
two at a windowpane
Four Plus One K
Anne Tardos
—for Lyn Hejinian
Tunneling predator
microsoft gravity
Embryo sassafras
Deepening memory
Kitchen.
Female executive
Long-faced Britannica
Budgeting ecstasy
Bungee mark water stain
Kerouac.
Trembling monogamy
Money-back marmoset
Mildewing gingerbread
Standalone graffiti
Kiwi.
Biodiversity
Newspaper bondage
Ice hockey bodycheck
Monkey bread fantasy
Kafka.
Prohibitive skingrafts
Dictionary sailboat
Sensual troubleshoot
Django Señora
Kabuki.
I am in Mexico
Have you ever been there
Awfully dangerous
Absolutely charming
Kaddish.
Closer to life we could
Cheddar cheese drip-dry
Baby block patchwork quilt
Quadriceps paradox
Kilimanjaro.
Pregnancy teatime
Pottery pinchbar
Bumpy road mopping floor
Elderly tenderloin
Kangaroo.
Puritan work ethic
Willy-nilly waiting
Despicable pillbox
Gagging on arrogance
Kansas.
One person family
Triggerfish mango
Everyone different
Humble existence
Keyboard.
Anyway Mexico
Faraway baby
Compassion for hostages
Particular emotions
Karma.
Want to say secular
Potbelly madness
Intensity happiness
Envelope pushpin
Kensington.
Vision of loveliness
Perforate nestegg
Carelessly overused
Artichoke lifeline
Keepsake.
&n
bsp; During the weeks before
Clarity somewhere
Angler-fish sprout atop
Despite the fact Tolstoy
Kenya.
Vivero nursery
Fiberglass euphony
Fetching diacritics
Watchful hegemony
Kimono.
Belle de Jour Severine
Austrian writer
Mediterranean
Fancy Vassily
Kandinsky.
Addis Ababa flu
Critical massacre
Aerodynamics glue
Jump collage triple cut
Kismet.
Zebulon heart attack
Temporary singsong
Suffragette etiquette
Meandering dropcloth
Karloff.
Timid alignment
Video video
Retribution sacrilege
Infantile granny
Kaleidoscope.
Euclidian assessment
Grammarian fallacy
Predicate calculus
Complex proposition
Kerosene.
Francis Picabia
Pokerfaced stingray
Soda jerk gravity
Pottery poetry
Ketchup.
Randomize clerihew
Distinguish a person
Sesame conflict
Perfidy treachery
Kepler.
Clear gazed gazelle
Visible expression
Lifelong resistance
To endless assaults
Kimberley.
Words upon words upon
Sketch after sketch
Oily gloomy naked brash
Clearlegged frowny
Kidneystone.
Diligent fenugreek
Tenticle buggery
Mescaline messenger
Zeppeline Breckenridge
King Kong.
Internal secretion
Parasitic zoom lens
Angle interior
Hellfire hedgehog
Kentucky.
Granular recipe
Circular ring-neck
Space-shuttle riverbank
Salamander sadness
Kierkegaard.
Roof garden prostitute
Permanent magnet
Mummification vest
Pocket mouse vortex
Kermit.
Podium spinnaker
Ocarina lipstick
Picador psychopath
Cavernous scullcap
Kiss.
Four Poems
Roberto Tejada
The Stranger: We must always make our distinctions so that they cut between the bones.
The Youngster: But Stranger, how can we tell whether we cut between the bones, or not?
—Plato, Statesman
If we recognize the variety and groundlessness
of grounds, if we speak from perplexity as
opposed to portrayal, if we are locked into the one
approach dominant in our time when
problems appeared at the periphery, “our distinctions
so that they cut between the bones,” can we
American Poetry Page 23
