Robert Fernandez

Sets the folds in alignment; this a shallow, a constitution of drops that moves to displace itself and unconsciously reverts to image. In such a state, the wave has become a setting— a table across which cups with propositions rolled inside them are passed. The passage of cups does not limit the range of potential outcomes, and yet at no point does the wave dissolve into abstraction. The shades are drawn and we are overwhelmed by flags crossing the black divan. An axis of rotation, gliding a fraction of an inch and yet unveiling its total mass. Advancing, the disc of its body shimmers. Alighting on the sand, it reveals itself in a cluster of pulses. Dilated, it lifts from the sea floor: fine spokes radiating on a wheel. It passes between bands of bright water, a kiss or a plow.

I How can we accommodate these reforms? The nights of bell-flowers are as finished as the hell of water that has unrolled and become news. Pull at the ox’s ring and the wall of the sinuses falls down. Pull at the hoop in the eyelid, dormitories are felled. A marriage of fists and kites, the smile is hammered so painstakingly into the gut it forms a ring. II I am staring up at a boxing match in which white Everlasts and red Everlasts take on the breakneck speed of cupids. Art Deco façades hem in the open-air courtyard; a black belt of skyline circles off their incandescent white waists. The sunrise pulls level with the sea. The boxers’ shadows furl and unfurl, drawing into cups. III You open your heart’s wings like a bread riot, split the uncooked potatoes on the table with a glance, and eat. You make the hours work like fragile perceptions for the food they get, the warmth they get, for the variable, contradictory spontaneities imposed on their bodies as love or triumph in mistaken assertions.

Melt the fat around the heart; Leave only muscle. For us Spectators Leave Only muscle; Only trim the fat To depth. And, even if you Nick the heart, If you tear it Or scratch it, If you slice a petal off it, Don’t sweat it. Be mindful only That you leave the muscle Clean, Sheared of  fat. Or you can Char the heart, Melt down the fat, Then eat it With fucking Fava beans. Whatever you do, Be sure To leave the heart Muscled: thick and delicious. For we, citizens, have come To both see and to be The god and the heart; We have come to become The horns of the heart Splintered into Their plumpest sections.

Slow the voice goes slower. Slow the slow rain down. Slow the narrow fellow in the grass stiffens. Now the slow blood stirs. Slow the voice goes slower: Soft lead, soft enough to eat. We dine on soft lead with lampreys. Slow the voice goes down to harden. Slow the silt reaches the bottom, And Davy Jones eats His slow meal of rubber and clay. Slow the slow rain down can rain. Slow the dead is dead. Slow the light, light. Slow the spirit is a bone, Toy from a child’s coffin.

At once this dragnet of cousins Whips its way into your presence saying None of them among us. They are Oracles on the court of midnight, The tight filigree of a mind or your Splashing around in, your pandemonium Of copper graffiti inexpertly put up. They make weapons of furled hands. “We will walk, but our bones will carry Ribbons of lead, or we will, like Acrobats mill-headed in 3s (3 blades, 3 hips, 3 tongues), answer to what comes Before, what comes before?” Eleousa, Master of Dark Eyelids, eye opening Like a fennel seed, you are generous Or are you not, do you shore up and Wink at the soul? What does the soul say Other than “my divorce from . . .,” “tan Holiday . . .,” “smoking crystal in teak rooms . . .” But should have asked, “What do you See?” The sun a sequence of fans, a bridge, Only so exquisitely cabled as to make us Still—shall we fall Or travel between bridges Among the robust, sane clouds, A face cut from smoke, heat, and light? The sun, dancing in a vial, the initial Memory of what it was to be born— Doberman of a sheer-white universe— To school out—the audacity of rising Without name or color to new rooms, New youth, fruitful, born singularly To precise moments not in epiphany But duration—as under new weather We become—in action, receive—our Bodies uncasked like umbrellas under The flamingo-red light of the racing day.

Give us water and food to pursue our tasks. Help us not become wards of the state, impoverished, homeless, destitute, crushed under the heel, buried in systems, imprisoned, dead, hospitalized. We die die die. Our dogs will not walk themselves after we go. Our bodies will not burn themselves after we go. Our apartments will not pack themselves after we die. Instead, bright ribbons of work, tangled in our bodies, will be vomited out and indeed bright ribbons will be vomited out. In the meantime, the light’s eyelashes open and close. And in the meantime, work and reprieve. Lie down; don’t lie; lie flat; lie still. See these books bound in itching white leather? They are your life. And each feathery page, lifted by hot wind. O summer air, o gardens, o seasons ô châteaux. The glaring day, it binds, o occurrence, o soil o soul.