Ann Lauterbach

She holds a conversation with her ornaments, stray or contingent, heaped in patches darkly and then loosened onto the table to be consumed. Collect me, they seem to ask, into an assembly; construe us like any morning onto any day. Bring us forward notch by notch into a paradigm of comfort to be clasped: any cup will do. Any dance? Take a seed and blow it toward the curtain which, like a bright shield hugging breasts into radiance, is seen and spoken of and desired. Will any silence fit? So many columns of air are held upright in inebriated passage, so many paper stacks brittle under the weight of what was news to attentive readers as zones of holy strangers feed through tunnels their imported cares. Stare at us, they seem to say, we are windows propped up against the sky, quotations of light waiting to sail into your aperture, calling because because and now now now. And the good body is pulled over the original rapacious body like a huge sock, its cornucopia of sour wind and dust emptied into the firmament.

Comes sarcastic November in mummy garb, hauling, same old same old what laid bare what totaled. Sees thru the estimated costs, stench collisions, inanimate dregs, remembers the bruised figures, their numerology as stars.Up up, down down is how she counts as the hunters begin to hunt. This is the plot of erasure, this the lavender bath. Truth be known, the dark won by a landslide. Yet friends in far January await news of the front, cycling up the snow-clad hills. They are to be exhumed from the grail of the keeper, he who heralds what’s here. To them, send dreams that pop open when breathed on and ask them to complete this sentence: If God is in the details, then ... But in the end there was only a chair covered in velvet and the sibling, dark as a forest, turned into words. There were the stamps with monsters and the stamps with flowers, there was a dumpster of old paint. Even the egalitarian whimsy of the gold rush is in partial view: harbor’s sleek hulls, willow disintegrating in drapery and nonce. What others did taking us to task in the field, into archival maps along a bank. What is it they wanted? Among strangers, beyond the stamina of pictures —the dancer on stage, his ruined feet, as they would flail crops when the spring comes, and flood, and tassels rise, as my head—

1. Someone plays & the breaking mounts. Raw material for worthy forthcoming; indecipherable, discrete. Plays rhapsodies as the air cools and vanquishes: nothing sits still, yet. The land is a result of its use, I explained. Everything else rested while the kids made a girdle removed from classical syntax. Shed, and something breaks, mounting the small hill to its vista: I saw a rope of trees in another country. I could not say I am lost in the proper way. The season is huge. This house is haunted: I planted it. Where? In the shed, and spoiled by attention. You see? Every bit counts, when the morning displays the serious ratio of the given stars. What made us tear the hours into lines? So things became a burden to shed, and astute as a hungry pilgrim but not brave, not expert. It is impolite to stare. Is unwise to plunder the easily forgotten, easily shed, and 2. They drummed and drummed, attached to a vestigial clamor. The heat splayed; sparklers ravished the fog. Morning tore the dead back to shore; enemy ships floundered and were forgotten. Still, nothing was appeased: the living silhouette drifted into view like an ephemeral sail promoting ease between wreckages. Not speaking a word of English she animated the landscape with abundance, a chosen self lively translated into the color of her eyes. Awkward and luminous, a stilted charm separating figure from ground, and solving it. What pushed up toward the abysmal with such new appraisals, such sure interest? The mute girl had seen glories but what had she come to know? A finite figure in a rainy field. A naked figure in a pool. A skipping figure across a bridge. A lost figure on a city street. A moaning figure on a huge bed. A smiling face in a photograph. All summer, I circled the garden for her sake. In memory of my sister Jennifer

There is a spectacle and something is added to history. It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a gun, the prevention of sleep. I am placed in its stead and the requisite shadow is yours. It casts across me, a violent coat. It seems I fit into its sleeve. So the body wanders. Sometime it goes where light does not reach. You recall how they moved in the moon dust?Hop, hop. What they said to us from that distance was stupid. They did not say I love you for example. The spectacle has been placed in my room. Can you hear its episode trailing, pretending to be a thing with variegated wings? Do you know the name of this thing? It is a rubbing from an image. The subject of the image is that which trespasses. You are invited to watch. The body in complete dark casting nothing back. The thing turns and flicks and opens.

This trace, if it exists, is alms for delusion. An arch uncurls from the floor scented with the scent of a tapestry, housed here. I recall the hour but not its passage unless dream captures and ties it to sleep: a fat bellhop smiles, shows me to the tower where I can watch the departure. But some days settle so that nothing crosses the horizon; stare as I will, no star needles the air. Now I am left on the outskirts of a forest hemmed in by wheat where plump trees hide the image, its symmetry shot up and blown across the ground like feathers. The unicorn, the grail, blue and red wings of kneeling musicians, these are embroidered elsewhere. Perseverance was crowned. Hope and Pity prayed for success. How fast is this camera? Can it record a trace? There was a voyage. Four mounted horses strain against centuries. To each is allotted: dust kicked up, smoke, plumage.