American Poetry

by Bradford Morrow

  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