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The Blue Tower

Page 6

by Tomaz Salamun


  The loaf hits the platter sliced, just

  a bit sliced.

  Blueberries, strawberries, an appetite, shutters.

  Set down your sleeves, set down your sleeves, set down

  your class, the foam around your mouth.

  Do you recall the pilgrims on Ptuj Hill that

  Mihelič painted, the candies you devoured

  and the little vinyl Boy Scout blackboards?

  Manure smells of nobility, not a stable.

  My pages are all over the place, with

  ants walking on them.

  Today is June 28, Saint Vitus’s Day. What have we postmarked?

  Babies carry kindling.

  A pelican fans warm embers up to its waist,

  so that our anthem can crash more dramatically on the rocks

  of the Adriatic. Nabokov doesn’t recall this,

  he came here later.

  I want up on the gallows.

  I’m approached by a gentleman who

  also wants up on the gallows.

  I’ve been approached by ladies who had the most beautiful

  hands in this or that city.

  When did I miss my descent?

  CHIUNQUE GIUNGE LE MANI

  Tar of hoplites

  Timava, turn round

  on a pram, at a car, at a fence

  the famished door of the sun, rain

  savages clean up after themselves

  Vikrče in a wigwam, out, five fingers, one missing

  five fingers, sticky titmice,

  missing FARO

  light

  mommy’s cramped spaces

  no bookworm, no bookish vase

  test tubes behind gilt doors

  ropes, pikes

  whispering buona sera

  ranks bounce, a hunting dog

  iodine, iodine, iodine, the bellet gets pitchy

  it runs like an animal-god, a train-bird

  probability preserved

  a hail of departed

  dandelion dodge

  terrine, timeo take off

  disheveled hair

  ree gee dee vee dee mo

  a bow to the cricket sky

  tug tug tug

  kate sacking off

  december sip sip sip

  howls into a magnetic heart

  che devono fare

  spin threads

  teach olive trees

  bits of the next day in john the fireman

  resoled auras

  june bug has countless coats

  sesame to the prince of the door

  to hack out a verb with a tschor polenta

  you live on the tiny grass

  you live and don’t hack out verbs

  live birth the arm rots

  winged well-drained bessarabians

  came to the house

  lifted the silt

  i stand in for happiness

  age of pleistocenestimated seed

  an expanded creature

  supple water lily, crotch of beanpole

  the living are fine with a corpse

  a clod in a granite flute’s studio

  venus, bright goldfinch

  Donnini, autumn 2002

 

 

 


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