Fanny Howe

Feathers fluffed the ashtray bin at the bottom of the elevator. Feathers and a smeared black look littered the parking lot like mascara. A cage would glide back and let them out to merge with the other cars on La Brea. It looked as if a struggle had ended in tears between the bird and an enemy. She broke through the fear to examine it. No chicken claws, or comb, no wing, no egg. The neutrality of words like “nothing” and “silence” vibrated at her back like plastic drapes. How could there be a word for silence? A child’s lips might blow, the North wind bring snow, a few stars explode, boats rock, but whatever moved in air did not by necessity move in ears and require the word “silence” therefore. She had personally sunk to a level where she could produce thought, and only “violence” remained a problem. It was common in her circle. A bush could turn into a fire, or a face at a clap of the hand could release spit and infection. The deviants were like herself unable to control their feelings. Los Angeles for them was only hostile as a real situation during the rainy season when torrents ripped down the sides of the canyons and overnight turned them sloshy. Then they hid in underground places, carrying Must the Morgue be my Only Shelter?? signs. But the rest of the time the sort of whiteness spread out by a Southland sun kept them warm, and they could shit whenever they wanted to, in those places they had long ago staked out. My personal angel is my maid, said one to another, putting down his Rilke with a gentle smile.

Yellow goblins and a god I can swallow: Eyes in the evergreens under ice. Interior monologue and some voice. Weary fears, the usual trials and a place to surmise blessedness.

For Peter S. I saw the shrouds of prisoners like baptismal gowns buried outside the cemetery. On the canvas frills exhaled singed wool and cardboard. The angels arrived as lace. Took notes, then stuck. Awful residue from a small cut. • The veil has been ripped from the skin where it was burned in. The skin is the veil, the baby-material, imprinted on, as if one dropped the handkerchief and it was one’s wrist. The cuff is frightening. Stuffed onto oil. Water-stains might fence its ghost in. • “The barbed wire complex” I understand. Winged and flattened at the same time, poor things! Some leftover specters of blood. Remember Blake’s figures like columns with heads looking around for God? When events are not as random as they seem. • The article of clothing is only half there, it’s not full, but when it falls forward, it is. Terrible emptiness of the spread neckline and little sleeve. Half-cooked squares. Was this religious fire and is this where it passed? Maybe they are floating on water of paint, pool-sized, blue and ridged like foam. You would have to fly to see them flat as a map. The rib and hem. Rained on for eons. Noah’s children’s floating forms. • Angels die? It’s a frightening-miracle because here they are. The Upper God has let them drop like centuries into space. And I recognize them!

There is no Rescue Mission where it isn’t freezing from the need that created it. The lost children distill to pure chemical. Where Good is called No-Tone it’s the one who cries out who doesn’t get a coat. The children fuse colors because they don’t want to separate. Daughters shot off of hydrants who cut each other in the neck and gut, don’t care which one of them will end up later in surgery. And drugged sons pretending to be costumes, well, they’re not welcome to comprehension either. Why does a wild child confuse a moon with a hole in his skin? One was born soaked in gin. His first sip was from a bottle of denial. What can “leave me alone” mean after that? The system is settled, dimensions fixed. Another one’s hand feels like a starfish. Makes me hysterical like the word perestroika. But they all dig the way the pepper is rosy in the vodka. It’s verbocity that creates jokers. Brick and grit are the candy and frosting where volunteers and teachers write cards that go: “Donate books that say NOT and NO and poets who say Urn instead of Oh.” How do the children convert their troubles into hip-hop? Dunno—but it’s wonderful.

If my fingers could twang the guitar as before they would not be what they are and neither would I. I would be back in young-time. Incline towards me, Gwendolyn, this Monday, and lend me your ear while I loll on my pillows to turn your songs from strings into tin.

The fields are infertile as far as I can tell. Their winter systems sparkle like the diamonds that pelt Neptune. Limpid silvers reflect in the dark museums and theaters back in town. To them we run to elevate our eyes to a well-shaped ethics. Colors are supplied by our nervous minds. • Towards a just and invisible image behind each substance and its place in a sentence you must have been walking. Well-defended, best when lost from wanting. Be like grass, she told me, lie flat, spring up. • We drop the shadows where they are then return to them when the light has grown heavy. You’ll take your time lugging the weight into our room. Or stand over there in the shade. We’ve never been too sure that we exist as the earth does. We’re most at home in water that soaks up the letters in our brains. It could be we have been dry too long. A spirit is a mess when excess spoils it. • I see them through the slats and crack of the open window. A cold rain. Leaves flipped and palsied. The river is brown near the sand, loose banks and twigs stick at the edge and a lilac’s silhouette of a child I love. How in the dark hole can I hide if   I can’t get outside? Then I won’t remember what I did to deserve it. That arch and bridge will form a shape of repentance. If  I’m hanging, then judgment has been passed. And I am hanging upside down head swinging towards the moon. Years of  inversion. A face in a mirror displaced by its position outside silver. And so? Next will come muscle, a little grief   but no shoulder. • You’re learning how to be a unit with an infinite in its attic. It’s not difficult. Light is the last message. White streaks like oil paint are the first to appear along the wet railing. Next similar colors correspond by chance. We would rather be (die) with total strangers than with partial ones we realized in the elevator going down. It was the only time that day that we were as alone as we were awake. Sensing a just and impartial ghost close to each living thing I could see the genius of  institutional religion. Examine your conscience. Confess in darkness and take away a task. Soon you’ll wash off flesh scented by its parallel past. What were your feet thinking in their hurry to connect the parts? Get the children to the other side! What children? You were the one running. There was never any other.

The source I thought was Arctic the good Platonic Up the pole was soaked film an electric elevation onto a fishy platform and waves on two sides greenly welcoming The sunwater poured on holy atheism It was light that powered out my ego or my heart before ending with a letter

After I.F. Annensky First the sky was yellow then white snow followed. On a hand was an amethyst: a cube of  lilac in hospital light. • Whose fault is it when no one visits? • Last night I dreamed I was in a peaceful place but woke up freezing and ashamed. On a side street (on my sheets) one I loved passed as a shadow. Maddish, reddish, his fist clenched for a fight. • I recalled his body color being soft like a child. The drunken nipples. • Honey I called. We were too late. God and the gods have moved outside the jeweled air and sun motes   ... to where a star is: an amethyst minus a poet.

The stroll from my cell along the path above the donkeys past a door open, a door shut and a strong smell of wood and cigarettes ends where music helps white marguerites cut through the masonry. * Dark for words with a clicking wren a yellow tit and over the clover a shovel and a rustle of grain. He’s training calves with shouts and food to follow him to another field before the second bell. * Broom loops over the buttercups. These names give birth to cones and needles, ferns with mini-sacs of pollen attached. It only takes one shot of spittle on green for my brother to explain the sexual life of the forest and honeybees. * Simon says he would like to live alone in a cottage with a garden, no humans, no obligations.  Solitary I prefer a pod while he likes hives. We confess we both wear armor outside our habitats. * Water was our first armor before our skin. Then came the bristle of sunshine. And a thickening of blood into oil or syrup in the lower veins. * I hate the thistledown covering my prototype now interior layer cowering at power or shout, but can laugh with the one who has sap under his skin pouring the bucket the hand is carrying. * Brother, help me find an animal who will rescue me from sharp delirium of fear beyond armor and my friends the birds by an open window:  to be clear would be wonderful. A sigh without the ghostly gasps that accompany a certain voice. Still I still do desire more of the kind no one can see or hear. Not that second, rasping breath of triumph. Find me instead more like the breathy Saint Bernard. But a little dog A cask of brandy hanging at his neck

Homeless and never sadder, dragging bags, spending money, leaning over luggage, suddenly saying, “Without you, God, I can’t continue.” Who was that? And then I lift it and walk to find one book. Up Iffley Turn to the Hawkwell and Tree Inns and down over a lock into an extended filthy river through the Thames Valley and over a meadow into town: two fats, one fishing and one man on a bike swerving through Cotswold cow pads. I ask: “Do you know the fastest way to City Centre?” No, yes, no! Circle Magdalen College, and the mall, the High, Broad Street,