Ange Mlinko

Two flags nuzzle each other in the desultory gust because they are fleeing the trees, who are cruel to one another, shading their neighbors to death a mixed bag advocating small business in a loose confederation. The flags don’t give any shade at all. On the anniversary of our country we throw dynamite at the air we build into. * Daylight savings. A beeline to a sea lion, as the children’s song extols, or is it a beeline to a scallion? You hear your own accent— or a child makes an error to see if you’re listening. A heartfelt counterfeit. * A cough muffled in its own sputum’s repeated in the next throat: a family of coughs comes to couch in us while the sun rises over the church, treetops’ psych ops combusting all over the ground tasked with a snowdrop.

If an orchidophage’s tastebud magnified resembles an orchid so my buds indubitably mimic pricking ice cream cones. Love, little by little it dawned on us the artisanal ice cream, especially the prizewinning caramel, would be out of our reach, like the previous Friday of a Sunday leaving the beach, in the meltdown. When you gasp at the soundfile of cymbals

Terrible are the rose names ... Stakeholders in a tradition of “Grande Amore” and “True Love” (one carmine, the other blush ... ), their aims are, for the most part, scattershot. “Mothersday” and “Playboy,” “Senior Prom” and “Let’s Enjoy” vie with a lyrical “Lady of Shalott,” while a flyweight “Pink Knockout” comes “Outta the Blue” to mock “Honey Perfume,” “Pillow Talk” — jock Cupid wielding clout. Then maybe a puckish curator pairs “Las Vegas” with “Nearly Wild,” “Buttercream” with “Julia Child,” “Aloha” with “Hello, Neighbor ... ” • Misenus, son of Aeolus, god of the wind, don’t you think it’s bad form to practice trumpet on this platform, what with the dentistry squeal at construction site decibel levels of braking blade shaving molar steel, dropped-in blare of delays and arrivals squelched against granite, at close intervals, while you riff on “Over the Rainbow” — ? You received some negative attention from Triton, after blowing his conch so loud you inadvertently entered yourself in an unwinnable contest; now, stuck in a twenty-first-century translation of hell, you press the stops, and for an obol prepare our burial in an infinite axial scroll with a tinier and tinier turning radius, as if we were those hordes, the unsanctified, who shoved one another along the Cocytus, none led on to the golden bough by Venus’s semaphore, the unloved rock doves, whom Virgil treats so gently in the Aeneid.

It is Hermes stepping off his winged sandal. ...I saw the Writing Spider sitting with aplomb Even his caduceus, despite the scandal dead center her creation, above the compost of its forfeiture, lies abandoned (sage location); what I wondered most like an Android or iPad on a nightstand was whether the sweetgum burrs and dried leaves grown footed for the purpose of bearing away were ornaments or accidents she interweaves any such device or gadget as may in the clearly golden silk, whose subwebs distract him from a more pressing matter. are occupied by diminutive male sub-celebs Herse is perched on the precipice of the mattress holding down the fort (as she holds court) with its luxurious bedspread, where tapestry long after she vanishes, stopping short vis-à-vis itself interleaves the allegory. of the epiphany or apotheosis Real gold thread weighs the covers we expect from genteel arts, or a goddess a cherub heaves to turn down for the lovers. “Who thereupon did rende the cloth in pieces every whit, Would that the same in his wings might tip the scales, Bicause the lewdnesse of the Gods was biased so in it. and with tears, put salt in these mythical tales And with an Arras weavers combe of Box she fiercely smit by sinking level with us l’enfant in the room ... Arachne on the forehead full a dozen times and more.”

Lobster in the bathtub. Christmas Eve. Scrub the tub first. Hand off cleanser. Rinse well. We don’t want Comet in our lobster. He’s clicking against the porcelain. Everyone leery of going to the bathroom. Bubbles had risen when we lowered him in, now he’s limp. Stare into the water that wears a similar gooseflesh. The lobster is dispatched.

I Should I take this time, while the children are in school, to untrim the tree? Standing in the dish we let go dry, it looks well-preserved, as if Christmas were still in our future; would it spare their feelings if I dismantle piece by piece its grandeur, or will I amplify their sense of loss, to de-jewel it without ritual? Epiphany, we drove by a painted camel on a church lawn — or what, after hard freeze, is lawn’s avatar. No magus, Jefferson Davis brought camel brawn to Texas to aid in the Civil War. Now they’re gone except in these tableaux where Balthazar, with all his diamonds, kneels before the Paragon. We were coming back from a weekend getaway before the holiday’s official end. I took the dog, went out on the beach, but the length of South Padre was swept by a long wind; dunes went astray; thin snakes of sand grains slithered; I couldn’t jog; the Gulf went from glaucous to cauldron gray. As in a Bedouin poem a gown of white sand eternally receded before me; the snakes raced. The profile of the island was changing, and despite the fury in my heart this tempest fanned, the beloved’s encampment can never be retraced: all texts are unwritten by the same hand. Boxes of baubles for yearly display we haul faithfully from house to house no nomad, I realize, could conscion. Your hem’s circumference all you know of enclosure. The open stall. Patterns are starting to emerge to my wondering eyes — on my skin, even. Up close, the epidermal Alhambra of triangles, stars. Back of wrist. Kneecap. Gypsies that named the lines on palms don’t look at soles, like yours, that close the lovelorn gap between the territory and (yes, yes) the map. Our tree is still in its vise. The road we took (don’t turn) is riddled with needles. Dried sap. II The boys are lighting fireworks on the ground. (Recall, this is a country called Illyria; even stars are upside down.) Toby and Andrew name the kinds of deliria: jumping jack, blooming flower, black cat    ... What rose-green shower — or umbrella — is that? The empty lot Toby and Andrew bring us to where crab-like diggers squat inertly in the champagne-cold, is impromptu beach, with all the night sky for sea. Juiced- up Roman candles discharge into it. Loosed, frantic, spinners change color like salamanders: spry Viola jumps back, goosed; but Feste jokes about motley, and ganders at the tracers that shroud us in gunsmoke. (Perhaps it’s just another carnival joke — your hand on the small of my back? Like blooms in the sky?) The New Year spoke by spoke nears, but with a breath of tombs the moment Feste, feeling insolently gay, heckles a rather elderly personage: “Pray you go out on your toes — or comatose.” I hear Malvolio say to Olivia holding her sparkler overly close, “Back off — you’re wearing too much hairspray.” III Speaking of ground flowers: Epiphany. The resorts are dead but for the foreign powers that raise pistils in a yellow head crouching on a Cypriot beach. A rough, hairy pod — surprise! — jumps at my touch and squirts seed at my eyes. Because I hear the wind rush against the palm-palms with which our balcony is flush; sky cloud over with qualms; memories blur. Psyche’s actuaries beg to take the measure of our folded white Januaries with sleep’s ruled erasure. IV Do I have to be mailed in bubbles or toiling over bouillabaisse, frisées, port glaze for Sir Omnivore; protagonist of a page-turner, Haze mére or fille; people-pleaser, cocktease, she-bear, in niqab, in getup, in stays; having taken St. Paul’s advice to seize the gold ring: Who groks the paradox? Though one would sooner burn than freeze    ... I’ve taken to the dark stuff since you left: a stovetop espresso maker with the heft of a campfire kettle to express more strongly my mettle.

If you’d seen the Gaillardots’ mullein in the Cedars of the Shouf; if you’d seen the Aleppo dock, red with iron, in Bcharre where the Adonis River’s said to run as red with what was thought his blood; if you’d seen the bearded oat in Burjein, the rayed white horehound in Tripoli; or maybe the milkwort in Ehden, as often I saw the strigose bellflower and the cyclamen, you might have been the more awed by a mallow-leaved bindweed in Aley on your way to the brunnera in Baalbek. The Mediterranean poppy in Nabatieh, Beirut mullein in nearby Baabda, connate Alexanders in Qadisha, fodder vetch in Zgharta, white rocket in Sour, Gypsywort in Marjeyoun, headed Ziziphora in Baakleen, bladder skullcap in Barouk. The viscid catchfly, ah, vying with bats at evening in Zahle—for these the earth of continuous habitation since the Chalcolithic Age salivates at dawn. But not a reed grows where no grave is. In Sacandaga Valley, two thousand bodies were trans-buried by the boneyard gang. They ceded the pitted ground to the dentist gang, whose jackhammers drilled the rock beneath. Powder monkeys tamped the holes with dynamite. The beaver-tooth gang’s axes and cross-cut saws cleared the trees. Bush burners followed. The fires burned for two years. The patience of dam builders built a force equal to the water: It flooded the ashes, the railroad station, and a train, which I saw transposed in the steely swells, or so it seemed. But iron turns a torrent red.

I wake to light jackhammering, and news follows: a plane failed over the sea. All want to go home, but drastic curfews obtain from a meridian. *     *     * We are a long way from a sea that cedes black boxes from an area forested as the Andes. Instead, a Mercedes, black as La Brea, leaps from the backlit red, anonymous, when we try to cross at the traffic island discarding hibiscus with every wind-toss. *     *     * We are a long way from the courteous lilac or waxwing with sensitive feather tipped as a kayak is tipped by a coxswain.

In someone’s distant algorithm your mortgage was bundled to another’s —hedged— and stamped a new “security.” While it was swapped from investor to investor accruing fees and interest at each turn, your shadow partner defaulted and she abandoned her home. Someone uses your mortgage to leverage something far inside the starbursts of a server. Likewise marriage has no image— What’s a mortgage and who’s it engage on the other side of the firewall? * I witnessed a will which—the language invested with law godmothers the peacock’s fanned screech— would take care of the baby in the event of a [blesses herself] It lives at the Cathedral and seems to be some kind of mascot for Baptisms * Securities: The future art you’ll make and its pleasure is hedged against the boys who died you fancied.

The flight attendants go from kore to semaphore as a city falls into discredited ether— Gewick, gewick, oo-oo! Shoulderless stoic, take—from hands wisely gloved— a bony treat through the hardware in your face; shrug your throat.