Camille Guthrie

I cannot know twisted Henriette of the plant kingdom Engrafted with a crutch. And yet her bulbous concerns Effuse a solid blue from inside, Like a steel Dryad, and her gaze effaced Shines with distended power. Otherwise These clusterjewels would not dazzle us so, As limbs proliferate through her pulped brain From dendrites where creation flared And this crippled tree would seem defaced, J’Accuse! beneath the lace of this clipped sister And would not glisten in synaptic blasts Would not, from all the reaching boughs of self, Burst like ripe sapphires:for here there is no place That does not see you. You shake forth a nest.

After Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel His Exterior toes like blue glass marbles nails like wax shavings feet like those of an elephant heels like narrow escapes soles like yellow sponges expanding in water legs like longitude and latitude knees like neon headlights thighs like open desert in a movie hips like a leaping horse a belly button like a luminescent watch pubic hair like frontier instances a penis like overnight mail balls large as a boar-hound’s seminal vesicles like tulip bulbs in a paper bag testicle muscles like rising chords an asshole like an undiscovered planet buttocks like a fleet antelope’s a sacrum like plein air painting a back like a chalked sidewalk a spinal column like a suspension bridge ribs like a bookcase a sternum like gum shoulder blades like kitchen tables a chest like a stuffed animal pectorals like floating bars of soap shoulders like observed facts arms like lassos fingers like sparklers wrist bones like a shipyard elbows like antidotes hands like passports an Adam’s apple like a great circle course a beard like Whitman’s a chin like a lichen-splotched rock ears like a full bathtub a nose like a birdcage nostrils like subway tunnels eyebrows like a captive audience a birthmark like a stop sign eyelids like a partial eclipse eyes like effervescence optical nerves like an orchid a forehead like a window display temples like singing crickets cheeks like party invitations jaws like handcuffs teeth like sweet tea a tongue like watercolors a mouth like a silk lampshade a face like a moving picture a head like a jar of pennies a skull like a geode skin with a black line running down it epidermis like a wool sweater whiskers like a street sweeper and hair like a cloudy day. His Interior cerebellum like a coffee grinder cerebral lobes like a house on fire cranial membranes like a construction-paper diorama optical nerves like a developing Polaroid cerebral fornix like colonial maps pineal gland like a giant pinecone circulatory system like cello strings eardrums like a still life with oranges forehead like television backbone like a fiddlehead fern nerve channels like transatlantic cables uvula like a propeller palate like a telegram saliva like a rotating sprinkler tonsils like action figures stomach like professional wrestling trachea like pirate radio throat like a bold headline lungs like plastic bags caught in a tree heart like a supernova pulmonary membranes like dirigibles arteries like rush hour diaphragm like the sound barrier liver like a public trial veins like Japanese characters spleen like a rogue bowels like surrealism guts like an inheritance small intestine like fake pearls large intestine like stolen currency colon like reliable data rectum like a fade-out kidneys like a barrier reef loins like a mowed lawn renal veins like gossip sperm glands like lava beds prostate like a fissure vent bladder like a fish bowl abdomen like a leather suitcase muscles like an assembly line tendons like pickpockets ligaments like safety pins bones like bones marrow like realism cartilage like strips of kelp lymph glands like sentimentality urine like sugar water blood like melted crayons and sperm like flies in amber. How He Acts If he laughs, it’s spontaneous combustion If he mutters, it’s a retreating glacier If he pouts, he sharpens his horn on stones If he jumps up and down, its hard to look away If he scratches himself, it’s with an aspen branch If he gets angry, he fights with tooth, horn, and heel If he spits, he fights his own kind If he blows his nose, it starts a riot If he sweats, it’s monsoons If he coughs, it unlocks doors in the next room If he argues, it’s over lost rituals If he sighs, it ruffles goldfinch feathers If he whistles, it’s overheard miles away If he snores, it’s over nostalgic reveries If he scowls, spears launch from his eyes If he snorts, it’s over gilt lion-head spouts If he shits, it’s historical documents If he belches, it’s a diary If he vomits, there’s finger-pointing all around If he walks, it’s Chaplin If he writes, it’s manifestos If he goes shopping, it’s for lentils and peas If he dances, it’s the Rites of Spring If he swears, he’s a ryght cruell beast If he drives, it’s among the Mountains of the Moon If he bathes, it’s in deceptive surfaces If he dresses, it’s a white linen suit If he wonders, it’s if his own reflection If he’s jealous, it’s of birthday parties If he lies, it’s about mathematical errors If he spends money, it’s on magic lanterns If he goes to the movies, it’s Vertigo If he listens to music, it’s the sound of running water If he falls, it’s down a slope of turf into the bushes If he recites, it’s from the Beast Epic of Alexandria If he is seduced, it’s a river of electricity If he is curious, he attempts to draw If he calls, it’s about weather patterns If he sings, it’s ‘Tyger, Tyger’ and if he escapes, he’s swift of foot.

“Being so caught up So mastered.” —Yeats I was too shy to say anything but Your poems are so beautiful. What kinds of things, feelings, or ideas inspire you, I mean, outside the raw experiences of your life? He turned a strange crosshatched color as if he stood in a clouded painting, and said, Thanks, but no other phenomena intrude upon my starlit mind. I see you are wondering what this is all about. Don’t mind me, I’m talking to myself again. Yes, poetry is nice and often beautiful, yet it doesn’t beget much attention, money, or even a simple thanks for placing the best words in the best order. That’s when I forget all about your incessant demands, and the restless subject leaps the stream in Technicolor— until the Remembrancer appears and says, Stop this wasteful life. Doctor, lawyer, thief. These fancies of yours could cost a life or worse, two. Meanwhile, he perceives my gifted body upholding my mind as I’m explaining my stuff on the Unicorn Tapestries, cheeks starting to color, feathers ruffling, quiet shudders. He shrugs, Your content sounds too beautiful but I’d like to read it sometime. Okay. He says all the right things, like I love you Hyacinth Girl. Things get interesting until the sudden blow: Thanks For the memories. What I’ll think seeing his new work in The New Yorker is Thanks for nothing, asshole, as he drops me for that prolific pastoral life with his wife upstate. The more I think about it, it all depends upon your phantom attention. Surely a world embroiders itself in one’s mind at any moment, words resounding, ardent present clarifyingly beautiful And beautifully truthful. You know? Here I should put in a lapis color Or a murky midnight blue. Or have the crowd stagger by in a riot of color pinning down the helpless beast with spears and ritualistic thanks to their gods. What one really wants to get at is the real, the eternally beautiful like The White Album or something. That’s what makes one perilous life worth living. All the brute indifference, humiliation, and failure can put one in the mind to give up, freak out, kill somebody, heart battered, so mastered. Oh you Wherever I go, on the subway, in my cubicle, at play, in sleep, it’s always you of the air, overpowering my senses like a Dutch master in one pure color, its fiction at full speed, walls breaking, a clarity panorama for the mind hunting for meaning and finding it at last! Now look at all the work I did, and not one thanks Not even flowers. Off you rush to watch him accept another award in that life We can only dream of. From where you sit it all seems so beautiful And I finally understand you. For that I can’t express enough thanks As the subject is the best color for me in the difficulty of this lonely life. It’s always caught up in my mind, what could be more beautiful.

First sew yourself into a pom pom mushroom Strut across the thirstland past faerie lights Shout complaints inside volcanic mancaves Scout for the last unlocated spring of ylem Then plait a cottage out of kestrel fluff Stir potato eyes into a vat of dislocated feelings Write a luculent novel five winters long Till dismay ferments enough nuclear energy to power Your moon buggy beyond the nacaret fields Stopping only to gather the pollen of the Umbiferous True Then plunge over cliffs sporting moth wings Dropping to the bottommost of the besprinkled sea And make your way up through the rain shadow On two cat feet in hostile territory All the while you compose a callithumpian song To nail a ritual within the astrobleme So bend dragons and constellate your enemies Fox on your shoulder spend a month sun-grazing A hundred hawks exploding before your stride Which will bring you luck on this godawful day You must make a new life by yourself like all Lurching tellurians stuck in eviternity