American Poetry

by Bradford Morrow

her hands are tied, like wings on either side of the arch.

  REST AREA

  Her dream was the earth being smashed by the sun.

  There was no heat, but the space was filled space; every day

  the sun drew more of the blue from it. The earth woman spoke first,

  so that her brother/husband wasn’t pleased, though it was not

  the imperfect vision of a practice dream. Drawing on her dream

  gives off a small portion of what is appositional. The edge of the earth

  blocks out the bottom portion, but I am not fooling with augury now.

  If you close your eyes in an unfamiliar place between gardens, that space

  will be reduced to the limits of her body. Or, once the sun exhausts

  its hydrogen, each dream will proceed to the red giant stage.

  Processing a patch of dandelion weeds which look like repossessed suns

  is called the binding problem. In a sequential system, a touched object

  in no sense corresponds to a sight object, the feel of petal and stem

  to the image of petal and stem. She wanted a pointillist’s dream.

  She sat hooded in the mist figuring how to “powder” constellations.

  The dandelions looked like go-betweens.

  In an ordinary drawing, you could perceive the earth and sun

  as flat bodies or you could half manipulate them like her dream.

  Sometimes she’ll not comprehend which is the lying sense, feeling

  or seeing, according to your temperament. It would make a mission

  out of looking through her things. That interchangeable subject is out

  of proportion to one’s usual relation to a dream. If the primary wavelength

  exists outside her limits, you’ll feel the subject always leaving you.

  Her eye won’t see it, since it is going beyond the course established

  for her dream: a star taking up with other stars, absorbing

  the primal medium as it perishes in you.

  Two Poems

  Vincent Katz

  RAIN-TOPPLED FEBRUARY DUSK

  rock and roll died without its personages

  drab garments idiotic save a turn of the century black cape

  with colored sewn flowers a male singer used

  alleviate leaves in single brushstroke

  the buddha amitabha seated in dhyana mudra indonesia

  many quiet marvels in andesite

  then the great faces of Rome the respect for personality

  the looks out of those worlds tempera encaustic

  highlights vast blizzards of congealment

  dull longviews by one of photography’s masters

  gentle limewood carvings of mother and child

  polychrome illusion on doweled appendages

  then back to the truth of the painters who marked

  last century’s end, like writers accompanied them

  smiling into absinthe, they sat and heard the world pass

  in a horse’s whinny, clop clop on cobbles cigarette smoke

  and alcohol a tiny hovel for one’s desires, pressed concupiscence

  pastel woman fading into air overviews and reflex

  the look of a real person smears of paint

  an immense forest dark with sunset’s final brilliant oranges

  poking glimmers a disappointing mess something really great

  fête galante stumping graphite chalk red and white

  eagles behind pinecones nestled in glass a belt buckle

  glass choker with cats tiny leaves carved in sandstone painted

  dimly lit hall perfect for Friday dusk kisses beneath the heights

  invocations to turn to linger slyly pushing forward inches away

  a sexy pose made clearer in lines become rigid no breathing of flesh

  the empty bedrooms of the grand, sickbeds ecstatic flights

  rain rhythms elastic bringing in front the slide down to park’s earth

  request to fly homeward rested achieved in culture frequent side accounted told

  BREADS AND SWEETS

  bridling with unseen

  energy, listen to moans

  falsifications even

  friends, haircut, architecture

  slide downhill where everything

  meshes, better than others

  I lift my eyes to sink

  vocal push into physical

  size, body contacted

  jealous of her producers

  interviewers who miss

  her point completely, sorry

  but the songs ascend ignorance

  shyly flirting segments

  imagination, flaunted

  intelligence, they leave her

  undented in morning

  actually it is I who

  misunderstand from my

  non-perspective, cascades

  of words, piano and voice

  are the weapons of armies

  bolted to past thoughts and

  present perceptions, refrain

  the delicate intensity forked

  spread up the photographs’

  frankness, I want to use her

  name, but not yet, the sky

  has descended, earlier

  we crossed the aqueduct

  I live only in my life now

  the words come from the

  latin and they have been

  preserved, I start to write

  the unexpected streams

  forth, didn’t know I was

  thinking, was I? in

  galleries, streets, passing

  people borne down

  by disharmony

  they want that watch

  and thatch but greed

  hovers, oh no, here

  comes the satellite

  descending, descending

  heedless of desire

  trees’ grandeur in shady

  boulevards, the song’s

  pure chant hits, evens

  promised longing till

  self re-emerges, washed

  and inimitable, once

  again able to attend

  I had hoped for so much

  expectation of necessity

  I am outside now

  September’s clear

  voice, indication

  that shutters will

  fall and open drily

  Land at Church City

  Thalia Field

  From a hovering point over the red clay path (a lane dusted with blistering) her eyes follow him on stages teetering, her wings that is, wet and not quite conscious, his wings really hands playing “forward” into the past fretted grabbable; a “there” tense ensemble past tense, forward of it, pushing into a path he’s grasping: all neck, all keys, into hymn.

  At last but faithfully abominable. Her eyes make tiny dervishes on the parched silence, fully parted to let loose a vowel slack in overexposed noon, scratching at opened seeds (he dances without prints for her) so that neither dares count prints, or lay them to lip in seasoned glare. His dance a pilgrim of patterns glaring too holy to mistake for mistakes.

  A billboard becomes Seraph the highest angel six, whole wings of calendars open, one for each day fluttering the rocky lane like anything red, like anything she can say mistakes are like, though he’s the red one.

  One mounting. One receiving. A bird forgives the beating up the entrance, as he could pardon the mention of the seventh missing day. This time holy places gather in permanent redemptions up the canyon turned off from familiar. No amenities. No public utilities. The population is bliss freak, and church.

  The town above hangs for him now above, and slightly high that way. High an ordinance of loss. High an anticipated beforehand. High the genetic unfinishable. High the deepest kissed past tense. Roof of unapproachable fire escapes. That nest of churches, for lack of a better word, huddles high in his sight, on its undamnable burning seat, and hers way behind and tipping.

&n
bsp; It is left for her to hover atheist and downward glancing. Not a single communion broached with binoculars loaded. Were eagles approaching a mile, a mouse might collapse to a print. But her wings bulk in balancing itchy devotion to “whatever,” in doctrinal “whereby.” Feathers aren’t muscles, yet oiled for repelling a rain not coming for nine hundred ninety-nine miles or years; same thing, she thinks, same thing.

  And below her his knees at the gate lips of ground meets kissing. Avenue the churches or blocks and street churches, for lack of a better word, every structure a church, every never his heart repelling tourists of grace for his soon expiation, turning back a cherub, second order angel on a self-same map, a winged child mispronounced.

  Out of stairs he could dispense his own suffering. Churches, for lack of a better word, bow upright to foundations set to poverty, to lift of thrice-born melancholy. One coupon of atmosphere wealthy, a bountiful vulture. How a town consumes with lacking better words than churches, yet only consumes churches. Welcome the hagiography of reflected celebrity.

  His head lifts to the altar, for lack of a better word, another rumored virgin, what he’s lost the chorus sacrificed, losing denomination in their say-so. Churches, for lack of a better word, fake the orange cones at detours consummating. Welcome to your very raptured transcience of patterning. Each church re-animates eternity for a slim visitation.

  Once he gains, for lack of a better word, a body’s drunken messenger, wax-wings instantly fathered, his better word falls toward offering. Tar-stained hands fly stones at one heat unimpeachable. Dust red prints wait in the tense of his tentative printing. Still high and hungry, one afflatus a scalding sunlight numb despite excessive longing. Each sweet translation of relics, cloaked in stained glass, balances skeletons before his each translation tarnishes the last translation. These sentences reflect attachments and wide glances from a sky profane of blue, as blank of believing in churches as his city is full. She believes in them on his behalf from a clueless, senseless perch.

  Sacred aims at blood detachment contains mortal layers of systems. Sins patched of pine tar, mosses which don’t come this rain. Plant the animal kingdom, or any small landing. Cycling bundled roots congest with slippery stasis; an alibi lane in the depth contraption.

  But high up in Church Town, for lack of a better name, a stage looses shadows inside the mission, a town unwieldy with churches, for lack of a better word, burdened with them and yet undeniably justified. Shadows and temperatures take umbrage in the testament, kneel beside dusty jubes, rolling beneath carved pews, his attention clots for shadows faithful to permanent dwellings.

  His feet are likely and pious approaching scriptured ongoings. His ongoings unblamable statuary, the furnishing of flesh made undiseased. Flight as she thinks her sanctuary in motion, digging from wings into a small repeated phrase, trembling at his faith.

  Or put one last way: without these churches, for lack of a better word, many denominations force face to city landings; wingspans irrelevant or wholly threaded, he would fret away the last full upholding, undo his fullblooded erection, wait: there could be another anunciation, interrupting flight.

  Invisible blanks hold the doors open, they’re double and stand barely parted, but do part upon curious muscles. One body makes a street a multitude of church buildings: assemblies and abbeys, apses and mihrabs, cathedrals mandiras monestaries chapels stupas temples. He is aching in worship, and with hands that strive to forgive the height of churches, for lack of any word for faith in height, or what passes unending, she hovers too close.

  Not Egypt

  John Taggart

  1.

  Turned sideways

  window turns into pillars

  shadow pillars and shadow porches

  deep red valley in a valley way down in Egypt land

  shadows and habitation

  of the dead

  Egypt

  not Egypt nor Hernando’s hideaway

  turned back

  into window in my room

  all’s green

  the leaves of the trees the corn field beyond

  grasses around the pond some of the green

  some obscured by books

  testaments of the dead

  testaments of the unwrapped dead.

  2.

  So many so many stones

  stone wall

  limestone and zigzag mortar

  the land silt loam so many wagon-loads of stones

  stone wall of Jacob Ramp’s stone house

  stone wall

  stone foundation

  so many wagon-loads of stones

  dusk

  dusk and dark along the road past Ramp’s stone house

  to my house

  white flowers of the Russian-olive

  white flowers by starlight

  wind

  exhilaration of the fragrance of the flowers

  by starlight.

  3.

  Side-road shortcut secret road

  up through the woods

  behind my house

  up through the woods

  perhaps made by Ramp perhaps made by his son

  behind my house which was his son’s house

  to the sweet cherry orchard

  no longer there

  not one tree of the orchard left to shake

  mossy overhung with vines secret road to what’s there

  to see in secret

  to see the secret family crest in all around me

  high up

  on an ascended plane

  kept alive.

  4.

  A good sign

  the old redbud is dying

  canker and wilt after last summer’s drought

  all’s green and the heart-shaped leaves are gone

  wilted and gone

  good a terrible thing to say

  sign

  that the turned back remains turned

  bad sign

  all over behind my house all over redbud leaves emergent

  heart-shaped leaves among the ferns

  native tree

  heart-shaped shadow

  native tree and tree of betrayal

  sign

  what remains native among all the native green.

  5.

  Like a plow

  cold-rolled iron shaped like a scoring-out plow

  tempered point

  a tool like a plow to make the mill-race

  tool and tools

  ahistorical pick and shovel

  tool and tools

  to move through depths of a valley

  from the creek through another woods under another road

  through another woods to the creek again

  mill-race

  made by a number of men with their tools

  by their labor

  which is my labor also

  a labor of ecstasy

  considerable labor of ecstasy.

  The Interrogation

  Renee Gladman

  His friends are waiting patiently in front of a popular cafe—waiting because they love him, he thinks. This walking, he will say to them when he arrives, was difficult for me. There were obstacles in the street—though I can’t prove it. Every time I hit one, falling on my head was the result, and by the time I had recovered from the fall, there was no accessible memory.

  Seeing them—in their glorious postures. He wants to yell encouragement, but is too tired to say the words. These are good friends, though. They know how to wait. Soon I will arrive and we’ll eat. Then he trips and falls into a pothole.

  When twenty minutes later he reaches them they are having an argument about eggs:

  Monique is saying, We have to think seriously here … the signals are always scrambled … what we have to do is figure out their corporate hours, then go in there and fuck em up … no, this does not support democracy, but we are beyond that occasion. While Stefani shouts, Yeah, let’s lay em all out, during M.’s ellipses.

&nb
sp; He thinks, this might not be about eggs and perhaps I’m not supposed to hear. But these are my friends! They’re smiling at me; one has his hand on my shoulder. They want me to ease into this conversation when I have been struggling to get here, when the worst things have happened to me.

  His best friend F. is among the group, and has his hand on the newcomer’s shoulder, trying to involve him in the conversation: So man, what do you think? Turning to him. The newcomer, with fuzzy head says, I just want to eat. I never care what it is.

  His friends appear to agree with him because three of them have walked away with the purpose, he presumes, of securing a table. This is the warmest day we’ve had so far, he says to himself as Adolfo tries to kiss him. He shakes him off and a minute later the others return. They stand around him, smoking.

  Stefani says, Monique, what’s this? Leaning on F. for assistance. I have made some diagrams, she answers, of the inner labyrinth, so that we’ll know where to place our men.

  Don’t be so—he snaps, exhausted and hungry, So—

  Freddie finds the group a table. It’s beautiful today, he says with some hesitation. Are we sure? I’m sure, the newcomer blurts. This is the perfect spot for me.

  After a few minutes of silence, Adolfo turns to the newcomer and asks, So what happened to you last night?

  To the newcomer this is a dream. For a moment, he looks inside. This is what I was hoping for. They want my story. When I was young, in the summers, this is what I imagined. A group turning to me, members with a cock to their heads. Awaiting—me. Not like the time I almost fell into the fire when Freddie was searching for more wood and something in that search kept him away for hours. As I lay there. And our other friends, who are now long gone, wandering in their drugs—

  He shakes his head, These are not my memories. Shakes his head again, more violently, where are my memories?

  Then he locks on to a series of aerial images.

  Birds don’t fly that low, he observes with growing paranoia. What’s that? Then a mosquito buzzes by. He moans, what’s that? He turns down a concrete path, slinking away from the bird: got to get away, but quietly so the fly does not notice me. The path runs along the periphery of this memory, which could just as well be outside, except that it’s not. Even he suspects it, yanking at the leaves from passing branches and shoving them up his nose. Real leaves of a real outside have a distinct and dirty smell—

  Stefani zips his sweatshirt shut and pushes him out the door. No more memory. Outside the cafe, he looks around. The light is low, as after a storm or shortly before sunset, or as a result of wearing shades, or some doom is coming. He feels his hand flapping around on his face, looking for shades. Decides to ask, Stefani, what’s on my face? She says she can’t report if she’s not looking at him. Well, look at me! But you said not to!