I am a stray wandering in the Indian water mass
slaying Hydrophidae by spells
an ocean condensed by refusal
of aromatic juvenilia
which has never existed by love of war
or dark Eudoxian gatherings
but as flight
as floating chimerical compost
like a navigator’s puzzle
inscripted
on certain methane tablets in Kemet
Blood Sonnets
Juliana Spahr
white blood cells at 4.2 thousand per cubic millimeter
As intricate system we are.
red blood cells at 3.88 millions per cubic millimeter
We with all with our complexities.
hemoglobin at 14.1 grams per decaliter
We with all our identifications.
hematocrit at 42.6%
We with all our homes and our irregularities live.
mean corpuscular volume at 109.6 fluid liquid
We are full of thought and we live.
mean corpuscular hemoglobin at 36.3 picograms per cell
We live with things several.
mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration at 33.1%
We are full of thought and we are different.
red blood cell distribution width at 13.5%
For which things so several.
platelets at 216 thousand per cubic millimeter
The catalogue of the life span, the operation, and the animal.
mean platelet volume at 7.8 fluid liquid
The catalogue of force and animal life.
granulocyte at 62.4%
The catalogue of the extension of life, the operation, and the animal.
lymphocyte at 27.0%
The catalogue of the extension of the execution of life and the animal.
monocyte at 8.6%
Togetherness of the lesson and the splitting.
eosinophil at 1.4%
Togetherness of the lesson and to duplicate one’s self.
basophil at 0.6%
Things should be said more largely than the personal way.
granulocyte absolute at 2.6 thousand per cubic millimeter
Things are larger than the personal way of telling.
lymphocyte absolute at 1.1 %
Intimate confession is a colonial project.
monocyte absolute at 0.4%
Confession’s structured plan of percents and regulations.
eosinophil absolute at 0.1 %
When the amounts of blood are considered.
basophil absolute at 0.0 thousand per cubic millimeter
When the strength, the quantities, of blood are regarded.
alanine amino tranferafe serum at 21 units per liter
When blood is thought as meaning.
cholesterol at 171 milligrams per decaliter
An intimate confession.
alkaline phosphatase at 46 units per liter
Blood is a force, a house.
gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase at 22 units per liter
And the difference between those that took and those that remained in what happened.
bilirubin total at 0.5 milligrams per decaliter
As the qualities of blood are considered remains undocumentable.
high density lipoprotein at 52 milligrams per decaliter
As the quantities of blood are considered remains unquantifiable.
low density lipoprotein at 124 milligrams per decaliter
For we are located with some and not with others for this is intimate.
cholesterol/high density lipoprotein at 3.6 risk
We are situated with some and not with one against confession.
time drawn at 1819
A catalogue of the individual and a catalogue of us with all our complexities.
absolute lymphocyte at 1134 cubic millimeter
A catalogue of full of thought.
cd3% (total t] at 88.5%
A house where we with all our complexities lie.
cd3 at 1004 cubic millimeter
A catalogue of blood.
cd4% (helper) at 39.9%
A catalogue of us with all our complexities.
cd4 at 452 cubic millimeter
A catalogue of how we are all full of thought and connection.
cd8% (supres) at 46.6%
The house where we are from and the house where we choose to live.
cd8 at 528 cubic millimeter
All things to be said more largely than the personal way.
cd4/cd8 ration at 0.9
There is in this the thought of home
sodium at 137 milliequivalents per liter
Those who had a home.
potassium at 4.6 milliequivalents per liter
Those who have a right to a home.
chloride at 98 milliequivalents per liter
And there is a difference between those who came and took and those who stayed in the taking
carbon dioxide at 26 milliequivalents per liter
The house of difference when we look.
blood urea nitrogen at 17 milligrams per decaliter
The house of norms and abnormalities and their percentages.
glucose at 111 milligrams per decaliter
Who of comparison.
creatinine at Ũ.9 milligrams per decaliter
Who of analogy.
calcium at 9.4 milligrams per decaliter
Who of empathy.
total protein at 7.1 grams per decaliter
Who of structural alignment.
albumin at 4.5 grams per decaliter
Who authorizes so one is not what individual one says one is.
lactic dehydrogenase at 171 international units per liter
Who authorizes so one is not single.
aspartate amino tranferafe serum at 25 international units per liter
Who empowers so one is not alone.
rapid plasma reagin at nonreactive
Who is expert of confession.
rapid plasma reagin titer at 1:2
Who one is situated with and not with others.
fluorescent treponemal antibody, absorbed at nonreactive
Who one lies with and not with others.
hepatitis b surface antigen at negative
Who is characterized how by some and not by others.
hepatitis b surface antibody at negative
Who is various.
hapatitis c antibody at negative
For who is located with some and not with stillness.
gonnococcal/chlamydia at negative
For who is asking and then listening.
Two Poems
Jerome Sala
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCREAMS
the cultural analyst convinced us that the screams
of teenagers were throwbacks
to a suppressed form of religion
that surfaces now and then
whenever anyone really hot
appears with erotic radiance
in the public sphere—
those are screams of pleasure
the friends of the god
granted the gift of ecstasy.
And besides
as one early ’60s horror movie advised
screaming can save your life
for it destroys the inner lobster
which would otherwise
shatter the spine
of those in great fear.
Following these theories
we were forced to listen to droning solemnities
about the similarities of pleasure and pain
fear and power
and when we objected
were smashed in the head
(like a rubber Bobo doll gets smashed by a child
with a mallet)
with a cliché about clichés:
they’re solemn
these truths
we were told
because they’re true.
To which we said
no they’re not
truth is never boring
because even if it’s only the effect of power
what could make you scream more loudly
and with more delight.
MY ONE AND ONLY
The only people for me are the mad ones …
—Jack Kerouac
The only ones for me are the shy ones, the ones who are
too shy to be born, too shy to talk about their shyness,
too shy to be saved, who desire nothing but the yawn of
the common, who know how to douse out a Roman candle
when called upon to do so, the ones who are like spiders
scurrying back to their webs rather than devouring
the incredible shrinking people we’ve offered them as food.
The only ones for me are the tired ones, the ones who are
too tired to play their horns, too tired to walk away from
the land of the peppy, too tired not to shave, who set fire
to their lawns because they’ve fallen asleep smoking, who don’t
understand the calls of the louses who want us to return to
Roman decadence, who lecture us on the superiority of sleep
yet refuse to beg for giant steeples or oceans in their dreams.
The only ones for me are the defensive ones, the repressed ones,
the passive-aggressive co-dependent ones, the addicted ones,
the only ones for me are the squares, the uptight ones,
the greedy ones, the blatantly self-serving ones, those who think
small, who don’t know their right from their left, the cowardly
ones, the ashamed, the nobodies on their way to incomprehension,
the order takers, the inconspicuous or conspicuously consuming ones.
The only ones for me are the crawling ones, the ones who stall
on their way to utopia, the ones who think about leaving the womb,
then head back the other way, the ones who refuse to face the
problems you’ve created for them, the ones who roam through Rome
never figuring out how to do as the Romans do, the ones who would
rather buy a cheap figurine than a scented candle, but who know,
that in a pinch, a scented candle will do, without knowing what it will do.
The only ones for me are sly ones, the ones who are too sly
not to follow the norm, too sly to balk at failure, too sly to
rage, who die for everything but the pursuit of the extraordinary,
who know how not to get invited to the Roman orgy of life and then
how not to enjoy themselves when they don’t get there, the ones
who are like friars refusing to change their heavy, brown burlap
robes in the heat, the ones who refuse to take shelter under the
giant, man-eating plants they would be famous for growing if they
didn’t think debates over fame and nobody-ism were strictly for the un-sly.
The only ones for me are the stymied ones, the floundering ones,
the small-minded, the unadventurous, the late ones, the crybabies,
those who squander their asceticism, those who ponder the virtues
of athleticism and decide it’s not worth the effort, those who
follow the rules to such an absurd degree that the rules become
absurd, the shirkers who refuse to light a candle in the darkness,
and who make up the dark matter of the universe, now beginning to
be explored and quantified, much to their chagrin.
Ecstatic Persistence
Leonard Schwartz
Continuous revelation of,
no subject but light.
Too, tied to the stake
of foundational doubt.
Steam off rocks of this perception.
And snow monkeys. On their thrones.
Of stone. In the steam. Illuminated.
Action taken equals miracle.
Burning stake.
Or a world away:
a lament in tones so sweet the tones
permeate
This composition,
this drinking
establishment—
no, never the establishment—
(we seek to inhabit
what cannot be inhabited)
Yet the eye emerges whole.
Outside in that world
The voice dances as through trees
and who moves is like the bird
Deigning to primogeniture
knowing dark bloods and eye-buds
A snow monkey giving birth in snow
a splash of red, perception fired and fed
Where they eat the golden apples
and never get old and so forth
Figures on a stage
that lead miniature lives, zoo creatures
in the action of language
Wildness withheld, hope to uncover
The being outside the bars
at labor in the steam off those waters.
Would ask the music for help.
Would listen till I was out of my head
only they’d rightly say
escapist.
So when the song
is sealed,
let variously dispersed elves
Congregate
Let the ale in a glass, amber in color,
be drunk
And be replaced with ale, equally amber
Equally amber
Until the snow monkey
until the snow monkey
until the snow monkey.
Three Poems
Catherine Imbriglio
ROSARY
A figure of a man was in the water at the place
where they usually crossed the stream. First they weren’t sure
that the figure wasn’t actually a body but then they could tell
the limbs were filled with sand. Crossing the stream
made her feel drawn to scale. Each part of that distance
had to be dismembered to be understood, like the times
when he gave her his hand so she could get across to the bank,
or when she remembered she used to call sleep “sand.”
She kept on walking, but she was afraid of being drawn in,
recessively. She wanted to know whose scale.
A scale might tell her she was gaining too much weight
or it could give her a set of worldly properties.
That there is an angle to the rain could mean
she would like to catch something. More likely
she was after the approval of strangers. Saying this
might be an imbalance of belief, but a definition
is more valuable when it is uneven in its equivalence.
Maybe a life could be saved.
When they walked along the shore the small stones
clicked like determined beads. It was like a catalogue
of getting dark. Since a light is always capable
of being extinguished, she thought the threat of dark
was what gave light its complexity. She wanted the light
as a testament for her body: Tell me I am to be guessed at
like the water which keeps on going. But when night came
there were many lights. They seemed to undermine
the sky’s opacity. She loved them out of all proportion,
as if they held a deep feeling there.
TRISKELION
She used the neighbor’s roof as a reference point, liking its precarious congruity,
a mobile performative at the sightline: what a woman thinks about
before she conceives. See how they run, driven with carelessness,
clouds cutting up over the rooftop like comedians, like blind mice
dispensing with threes. As this was a theatrical positioning,
I
sat between them, trifocally, an intermediate vision
held commonly at arm’s length: Take my hand, I can’t see.
The boundaries of the third term blurred, there is in some part
a percentage of the other part, May as a fifth month or an auxiliary,
each a dispensable conditioning, given the farmer’s wife,
who, at this point, may be reaching out a hand to cover the distance,
as if to carve out a bridge or a tree.
A trial balloon: how to mediate a trivium, that which belongs
at the crossroads, hence common, what everyone knows. Coming after
the sun has passed the meridian, composed in the form of three
relatively constrained parts, trifolium or trihedron,
she is back at the old schedule, which without a third term
is like the wife’s anticipation, the news
of a death always coming in threes.
The sixth column may assist the fifth, or it may oppose it,
the one side pertaining to real significance rather than to form, i.e., give us
your mother’s maiden name for security purposes. I am worried about
your throat, a common experience indicating a slight shift in sympathy
among three branches, whose radiations from the center
can participate in only two arcs. To assume the proscenium as true,
as necessary to go on, after seeing the mice had gnawed away rings of bark
(called “girdling”), their eyes met only once all night, as if they were escaping
from division into two groups supposed to be exhaustive.
Meanwhile, she was staging an arcade: with respect to the roof, the moon
a saw blade, a builder’s instrument; with respect to the bridge,
American Poetry Page 28
