Poemunity — your poem community

All master narratives of the mind in a rowboat and the rowboat as beautiful as the swamp glowing the dungeon-state lily pads, unfolding like riddles of water, the Plasticine heads of amphibians, speckled skin of religious fervor, and the razor-blade weeds. All master narratives of the body in a rowboat at the bottom of the swamp that has no hands. All master narratives of the spirit in the rowboat sky reflecting the infant swamp, clouds of filth, soil knotted like tupelos and toppled alphabets. All master narratives of the skin in a rowboat inside a pine coffin of swamp water. All master narratives of thinking like a woman who says, 
“I choose inappropriate relationships.” All master narratives of dramatic structure in the soggy swamp, against the humid flags beating the wind. All master narratives of mythology like my son saying, “and then he turned into a very big wolf.” “I think he was very sad.” “He has feelings too, you know.” “I think he was sad because he got trapped inside the doors.” “Oh my god, there are different Fenrirs.” “Loki’s Fenrir met a different Fenrir.” “Are wolves part of the cat family?” “Hey, look up on your phone if they can change forms because these guys look different from the real Fenrir.” “See that white picture where he’s up on top? He turns huge and tries to eat the sun.” “Oh, that’s a tough Fenrir.” “I think he obeys the serpent.” “Now that’s sad Fenrir.” “Or maybe Loki turns into the serpent.” “Oh, Loki, are you a master of evil?” “I think they can change forms.”

Panic attacks your pain-porous skin? Imagine the layers of onion, Sufi-circling and circling until there is no tear-making body. If the issue is anorexia, taking starvation’s dark spirit-flight, or anhedonia, running from the skin’s having fun, consider the mushroom’s fleshy erection, and the pumpkins, earth goddesses and rotund Buddhas sprawled by compost’s funky aerosol. For social phobia, desensitize among the rows of corn’s parade, ticker tape leaves and Rasta tassels that wind-strut and bring on the crows’ hop and rap. Too much affect: meditate on potatoes, taciturn as overturned stones. Too little: visualize the hanging tomatoes’ insides, the soft hearts, sentimental ornaments. From the lettuce there is common sense for narcissism: acceptance as side dish, garnish for a meaty sandwich. If that leaf isn’t the dose, there’s always the soil people shovel and level, rake and make wishful with seed, feed leftovers from the compost’s vegan sewer, the soil that wants for nothing and yields and yields.

Friends in a field, their shadows running long into the untilled ground, and I’m busy trying to catch up, calling for them to hold on a moment, the voice unfamiliar and the words not my own, and when 
I wake I realize the last thing I called to them might have been the name of the town we were all looking for, but now it’s a summer morning, the light coming in urgent with day, sheets strewn at the end of the bed, and by the time my mind reaches out for it, that name or word or thought, it’s gone, perhaps lying there up ahead, with them in the town beyond the old shed at the edge of the field, with its collection of discarded tools, hoes and picks and shovels still caked in loam and soil, the old two-furrow plough and an empty feedbag. There’s a persimmon tree, with its thin covering of leaves and its branches weighed by tightly packed, hard orange orbs, dense and 
ripening, and a thicket of rosemary sprawling about in the autumn sun, gone wild, looking like it might take over the world with its thick rough tines, the heavy scent that rubs off onto skin and lasts all day even after you wake. But thinking of that town my friends have gone on to, looking out the window at the summer light, the raging open blue of the sky outside, I cross past the old shed to where the harrowed ground forms the first hint of a path between the cherry trees lining the field, to where a pair of jackdaws come in from the north, creamy white throats quiet as the flat slate sky above, flit 
between some memory of spring, the one gone or the one up ahead.

For Detroit There are birds here, so many birds here is what I was trying to say when they said those birds were metaphors for what is trapped between buildings and buildings. No. The birds are here to root around for bread the girl’s hands tear and toss like confetti. No, I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton, I said confetti, and no not the confetti a tank can make of a building. I mean the confetti a boy can’t stop smiling about and no his smile isn’t much like a skeleton at all. And no his neighborhood is not like a war zone. I am trying to say his neighborhood is as tattered and feathered as anything else, as shadow pierced by sun and light parted by shadow-dance as anything else, but they won’t stop saying how lovely the ruins, how ruined the lovely children must be in that birdless city.

There are black guards slamming cell gates on black men, And brown guards saying hello to brown men with numbers on their backs, And white guards laughing with white cons, and red guards, few, say nothing to red inmates as they walk by to chow and cells. There you have it, the little antpile . . . convicts marching in straight lines, guards flying on badged wings, permits to sting, to glut themselves at the cost of secluding themselves from their people . . Turning off their minds like watertaps wrapped in gunnysacks that insulate the pipes carrying the pale weak water to their hearts. It gets bad when you see these same guards carrying buckets of blood out of cells, see them puking at the smell, the people, their own people slashing their wrists, hanging themselves with belts from light outlets; it gets bad to see them clean up the mess, carry the blue cold body out under sheets, and then retake their places in guard cages, watching their people maul and mangle themselves, And over this blood-rutted land, the sun shines, the guards talk of horses and guns, go to the store and buy new boots, and the longer they work here the more powerful they become, taking on the presence of some ancient mummy, down in the dungeons of prison, a mummy that will not listen, but has a strange power in this dark world, to be so utterly disgusting in ignorance, and yet so proudly command so many men. . . . And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet, they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers, they fight for rings and money and drugs, in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs, to fight for what morsels they can. . . . And the other convicts, guilty of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent, they slowly turn to dust in the nightly winds here, flying in the wind back to their farms and cities. From the gash in their hearts, sand flies up spraying over houses and through trees, look at the sand blow over this deserted place, you are looking at them.

After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida She arrived as near to virginal as girls got in those days—i.e., young, the requisite dewy cheek flushed at its own daring. He had hoped for a little more edge. But she held the newspaper rolled like a scepter, his advertisement turned up to prove she was there solely at his bidding—and yet the gold band, the photographs ... a mother, then. He placed her in the old garden chair, the same one he went to evenings when the first tug on the cord sent the bulb swinging like the lamps in the medic’s tent over the wounded, swaddled shapes that moaned each time the Screaming Meemies let loose, their calculated shrieks so far away he thought of crickets—while all around him matted gauze and ether pricked up an itch so bad he could hardly sketch each clean curve of tissue opening. I shut my eyes, walk straight to it. Nothing special but it’s there, wicker fraying under my calming fingers.

In kindergarten during the Cold War, mid-day late bells jolted us, sending us single file into the hallway, where we sat, pressing our heads between our knees, waiting. During one of the bomb drills, Annette was standing. My mother said I would talk on and on about her, about how pretty she was. I still remember her that day, curly hair and pretty dress, looking perturbed the way little children do. Why Annette? There’s nothing to be upset about— The bombs won’t get us, I’ve seen what’s to come— it is the days, the steady pounding of days, like gentle rain, that will be our undoing.

Look! From my window there’s a view of city streets where only lives as dry as tortoises can crawl—the Gallapagos of desire. There is the day of Negroes with red hair and the day of insane women on the subway; there is the day of the word Trieste and the night of the blind man with the electric guitar. But I have no profession. Like a spy I read the papers—Situations Wanted. Surely there is a secret which, if I knew it, would change everything! 2 I have the poor man’s nerve-tic, irony. I see through the illusions of the age! The bell tolls, and the hearse advances, and the mourners follow, for my entertainment. I tread the burning pavement, the streets where drunkards stretch like photographs of civil death and trumpets strangle in electric shelves. The mannequins stare at me scornfully. I know they are pretending all day to be in earnest. And can it be that love is an illusion? When darkness falls on the enormous street the air is filled with Eros, whispering. Eyes, mouths, contrive to meet in silence, fearing they may be prevented. 3 O businessmen like ruins, bankers who are Bastilles, widows, sadder than the shores of lakes, then you were happy, when you still could tremble! But all night long my window sheds tears of light. I seek the word. The word is not forthcoming. O syllables of light ... O dark cathedral ...

For Ann Lauterbach Hemmed in by an un- tenable image: feathers planted below fragile branches of avian feet            scaly crossroads scoring a particular blue of sky offending through the uselessness of misplaced forms                       thorny prongs that make no sense (and yet belong) on the ground out of which the bird wings stiffly jut rigid as rhubarb leaf. Should you kneel the body's aged mechanism beneath the shade of dry feathers, should you angle the vulnerable cavern of ear—trembling passage to psyche's failures   our fall into suffering                           knowledge—toward the root should you listen you will hear the wasted strains of an underground song rising from the muffled beak: site of a perverse smothering throated core submerged deadened by thoughtless depths but alive for the dead have kept it safe from false music a ghoulish guard of LOVE SAFE from Psyche she who bullied by the cruelty of others the sophistication of fashionable libraries the envy of those who would molest the world into false confessions and banish                              all mystery with their dripping candles                   she who would unearth the birdsong                         to cage it she who                 will end by destroying what she loves most. Shhhh

1 There is a gold light in certain old paintings That represents a diffusion of sunlight. It is like happiness, when we are happy. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light, And the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the cross Share in its charity equally with the cross. 2 Orpheus hesitated beside the black river. With so much to look  forward to he looked back. We think he sang then, but the song is lost. At  least he had seen once more the  beloved back. I say the song went this way:O prolong Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong. 3 The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work. One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good. The orchard will bloom; someone will play the guitar. Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good. And all that we suffered through having existed Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.