Ron Silliman

for Pat Silliman XII A guide to the sky under full nondisclosure. Dawn in the bare birch trees, the sun, swollen, throbs over the horizon. Hotel buffet doodah. Two dogs dancing, sniffing one another’s genitalia. One can hear the electricity wired in the walls, water rushing through the pipes, the boards and joints of the old house groaning as they settle. Map of morning. Winter light. One’s experience of the transfer point air- port as that of the city itself. Dear winter, it’s 5:15 AM. Shoes for Mickey Mouse. Waste deep in the big muddy. The sound of rain around. The line (not visible) binds letters into words. People are drowning. Moon, broken in the middle. What a watch watches. Song of the single en- gine Cessna, threading the pre-dawn sky. One bird, one bird, many. Blades of grass brittle in the freeze. Spider’s corner of the bath room. One maple tree that will not return to life.

for Pat Silliman I Hard dreams. The moment at which you recognize that your own death lies in wait somewhere within your body. A lone ship defines the horizon. The rain is not safe to drink. In Grozny, in Bihac, the idea of history shudders with each new explosion. The rose lies unattended, wild thorns at the edge of a mass grave. Between classes, over strong coffee, young men argue the value of a pronoun. When this you see, remember. Note in a bottle bobs in a cartoon sea. The radio operator’s name is Sparks. Hand outlined in paint on a brick wall. Storm turns playground into a swamp. Finally we spot the wood duck on the middle lake. The dashboard of my car like the keyboard of a piano. Toy animals anywhere. Sun swells in the morning sky. Man with three pens clipped to the neck of his sweatshirt shuffles from one table to the next, seeking distance from the cold January air out the coffee house door, tall Styrofoam cup in one hand,Of Grammatology in the other. Outside, a dog is tied to any empty bench, bike chained to the No Parking sign.

Words torn, unseen, unseemly, scene some far suburb’s mall lot Summer’s theme: this year’s humid —to sweat is to know— pen squeezed too tight yields ink as blood or pus so the phrase scraped, removed offending thine eye: “Outsource Bush” Against which, insource what? Who will do it? Most terrible predicate—high above mountains snow-capped even in August in-flight motion picture Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind