FROM

From a tattered sky
From a sky without wind
From a medicine-bottle
From an oppressive reality
From her
From her thin nose
From his buggy to the post-office window
From his farm
From his pocket
From his business
From his boots
From its six months’ siege
From the stockier foreign breed
From the pale skies
From the same informant
From the inflection of his voice
From the porch
From the sleigh
From the lower openings
From the pure and frosty darkness
From the girl’s face
From the first day
From the train
From the bed behind him
From the whiteness of the pillow
From the throng about the shed
From the first
From the cutter
From the village
From the hills to Connecticut
From the sale of her piano
From the stove
From the banks of snow
From these hints
From where he stood
From within
From sun-up to dark
From hand to hand
From ear to chin
From side to side
From various people
From early morning
From experience


Take all incidents of the word “from” in the first three chapters of Ethan Frome and then rearrange them according to the alphabetic nature of their grammatical constructions—a, his, her, this—but maintaining chronological order within groups. Excise all incidents featuring proper names or places, except where Connecticut is mentioned.

AS

straight as a plumb-line
just as I come around the corner
yellow as gold
she same as gave you her word
hot as it is
he does not look in as he passes the door
as though they had been hacked with a blunt axe out of pig-iron
a glittering maze of hooves as by illusion
I mislike undecision as much
as though he is not listening
quick as mules
they sound as if they were speaking out of the air
like as not
like as not
a fish nigh as long as he is
just as I get up
I can stand here and same as see it with second-sight
much as I can get my mind on anything
well and hale as ere
I could eat God’s own victuals as a man should
as for ere a sparrow that falls
bloody as a hog
the road vanishes beneath the wagon as though it were a ribbon
as if it had never been there
she watches the boy as he leaves
same as writing
as if her eyes alone are listening
as though the stroking of the saw illumined its own motion
without so much as glancing
as if he had by some means fleshed his own teeth
heavy as lead
collapsing slowly as he works
fading into dusk as though darkness were a precursor of the ultimate earth
lightly as the reflection of a dead leaf
as though they doubted yet
his hand awkward as a claw
as soon
as they rear and plunge
it is as though the dark is resolving him


Take all incidents of the word “as” in the first thirty pages of As I Lay Dying. Maintain chronological arrangement, but determine the size of the incident based on its ability to extend the logic of its antecedent.

THE SUN

As if
that work
were just earth
cursed by sun
stippled skin itching
to feather so much
coagulating wisp in droves
of yolk-spun music
one curlicue of beard
seared by sun into word
as if all this crashing
into the humiliations of desire
were simply the sun’s curdle
rising nuclear from one’s flesh
no wonder that breath’s silent heft
best tricks the sun into correspondence
with unfettered magic in the plink
of teeth against the atmosphere’s heat
I goad the air into translation
caging a single little yellow fingertip
to see the cables wind
gold against floor’s fake grain
this is what it means
to curate even minor appendages
from the sun’s razored painting
and everyone knew it
was over the moment
these hideouts were born
starting over in vernal
effulgence to spill through
our hands’ fingered crannies
startled anew by
its anger
the sun
burning usually
but not obviously
or ever obliviously
to stoke such orphans
as make up flesh
into a sugary panic
Look at the stars!
the sun seems to exclaim
with all the other stars
laughing behind it in occlusion
the sun could not care
less about theories of time
but looks in on the sleeper
with a genuine sort of horror
for he has never grown tired
of fleeing his own domed colossus
in doomed bursts of ion hysteria
for even the sun grows
enamored of a fiendish distance
where even the solar winds
might seem like a gush
of horseflies lousy with Benzedrine
strangely the sun fails
like a dazed orange
ball bleeding in gasps
like a child shouting
Don’t look now!
when clearly desiring
that we do
we see
the burning
of our limbs
our selfsame limbs
wrapped like straightjackets
around the sun’s billion
bilious vectors of truth
Look at our arms!
we scream in exasperation
more than a little scorched
as the dreamer is transfigured
and the sun recoils trembling
into its web of fingers
Hold me! the sun croaks
out almost garroted for
the sun is desperate
and we do it
we duly proffer
the burning arms
of everything visible
until slowly
the sun’s
great dream begins
an icy meteor
hurtling through space
blind to its peril
as it slowly breaks
into traces of liquid
which sizzle and turn vapor
on the invisible spherical skin
of a million twirling planets

THE PHANTOM

for Erica Kaufman

What concurrence
turns empty
as the eye
forks toward it
or tongue unspools red
its vain syllable slew
to suture through the brain?
I called you a phantom
because you believed you were more
than some sewn order of forces
turning thrum and tumble one
moment only to go taut
in the organ’s congress
like nodes of claver
to build something
black and ecstatic
day suffocating
with candor
as hideous as
this insect’s green
sieve of beating wing
to outgasp the air
which submits with total authority
talking the leaves into flux
the coarse pink flags your hands
make snapping into further unknown directions
where the body reinvents itself
one horizon at a time
in spastic yellow bursts
face like waves
already less here
letting rage
rage on
in abject yellow
bursts talking backward
which corner the brain
hot for its antidote
to surface on the tongue’s
flummoxed felt pennant spilling open
like a fortune that writes itself
I asked you why the absence
of you became so rigid
and you asked me how
an atom goes stiff
if it’s always dancing

THE OWL

for Alex Lemon

Durer’s dour
little owl
stares strangely down
from his perch
on the bathroom wall
already less here now
cornering the brain in waves
whose peaks and dips duly
fritz a garish cough of feathers
into the corpse-light morning air
that my piss has tricked
cacophonous, yellow, diving, free, this
is what they mean
reproaching solemnity in fits
of strange glee
or crushing dissatisfaction
into breathable
red powders
we spiraled outward
left the city
took part-time work
freaking the ancient wood
into gusts of ion readiness
I brought you this owl
in case you needed each other
dawning negative at newly liminal cusps
is that what you mean
about god arriving in seizure
his horses just horses
baroque, relentless, and electrical
to hoove through
the body’s flummox
I’m always
this pregnant
with everyone’s child
unruly gut sprung
into tendrils of unknowing
most are thrill offenders
but I’m just taking flight

THE BEAR

for John Coletti

Waking worn
into day
like tumbling dice
fray into number
I cover the streets
wracked by lesser joys
each quake subsumed going oblique
by the green blinking leaves
make when you stumble away
as the other you returns simultaneously
chewing the absences loose to taut
a litter of bears broke
into the McDonald’s dumpster midnight
remind me to glean
summer horror’s yellow sleep
for every fled
modicum of song
another you
just bursting
cold yet vibratory
like fish thought
new choruses chafing wind
I stopped not looking
again and again got stuck
that way no name forest
heading wherever the limbs fall off
the bear was storing superannuated fat
minus the red happy meal plastic
I went to the cave
looking for questions not answers
stayed for the allegory
all numbers no spirit

THE HORSE

for Jere Martin

Actually clamoring
open here
the mere fact
of walking away
from oneself to edge
like horse minus rider
or is it the opposite
or is it a map
of us learning how to turn
itself on? I suppose I could
say anything in the vibration
between selves a crude rippling
how by breath it conspires
with greatnesses not our own
one small and suffocating
which duly loses itself
in the coarse rush
just to appear
what it needs
what it needs
actually clamoring
open here
this horseless
panic made frank
like a hand
breaking forth tendrils
of new scarlet readiness
to lunge against solemnity
like a horseless rider
leaves the desert of aiming
somewhere to rush everywhere simultaneously
red tendrils softly tearing off
in gaping chasms of summer thought
nothing now if not more intermissions
between the pattern of self-light
which strobes across the body
tricking every last stillness cinematic
from the jilting red depths
of a lonely hibernation
a desperate maroon sleep
under dusty stalagmite trees
a horseless rider
whose every direction
screams home

THE NEWSPAPERS

for Brandon Best

Disembeded
from life
through language
only to return
snagging the throat
most are thrill offenders
goading day into shape
or rescuing flotillas of peril
before they go safe again
I wake a little less here
in the predawn dash of scavengers
blubbering on for virtue or
just checking box scores
red neck sick again
as currency passes through
parceling whatever thought
condenses pill-size
for swallowing
for love
of the uncertain
let’s go hungry
as the newspapers say
most are thrill offenders
sunk down in the force
like a flaw keeping sacred
some otherwise rock-steady Navajo weave
fuck yeah I like long walks
resuscitating the earth with song
that’s why I called you
my dark Pleistocene tremolo
my stillness thrumming open
for thrill offenders
and old friends
just someone
thrumming open
on some sacred
mountain flaw shit
pass me the newspaper
almost less here already
so I can torch a path
not exactly forwards but away

Part One

Mongrel Vaudeville

SELECT COMPENDIUM OF FLAWS AT 32

Asymmetrical patch of stomach hair on left side, vaguely triangular
Bundle of tumorous blood vessels under left eye (benign), also known as spider angioma
Surgically implanted mesh threading the abdomen, denotes cyborg
Eyebrow hair of excess length, unruly
Missing rectangle of enamel on right central incisor, bottom left corner
Dry skin under beard, furtive
Scant intake of fruit, with exception of overpriced and bottled drinks
Extreme unction in the face of government-employed authority figures
Still paying rent
Has not read Proust
Dreadful lack of mastery as concerns any musical instrument: guitar, saw, child’s accordion etc.
Boring haircut, several years running
No progeny
Allergic to air conditioning
Annoying proclivity for stating obvious
Exceedingly catholic regard for cinema, untrustworthy partner
Narrow culinary skill set; mostly egg-, stew-, or sandwich-based
Unnecessary volume of alcohol consumption at parties wherein said alcohol is free
Unilingual: American-English
Raised, abrased patch of France-shaped scar tissue on right index finger; the result of a bizarre childhood injury involving a medieval Irish cannon
Compulsively punctual, read early

THE FACTS

Facts passing
by eye
too fast already
on Sunday train
so like this century
fascinating stupid gorgeous and cruel
like someone you’d never take
seriously but what asshole would sleep
with history in the first place?
slicing through eerie Massachusetts fog
to watch the graffiti blur
into an alien cursive
fascinating gorgeous illegal screaming
I AM FACT
like a gravestone
says WAS
this manner
of dim persistence
made billboard dire
as the palpitations continue
foraging nerve from readiness
in a heavy spectral burst
you were already passing by
lips curving into a purple snarl
or ransacking a thousand quick dilapidations
for their quotient of art
we forged another brief pornography
or alchemy same difference
this too sane century
mediating each disaster
before it comes
so as
to forget
real time death
I AM FACT
for this brief tenure
or am I simply
another of this century’s delusions
torquing into the camera’s path
which passes too quick already turning
every face into its own gravestone
I put this fact on earth
to receive its failure daily
to coax an egress
from truth or goad
all trains south
where spirit differs
and fact
gladly collapses

THE LUNG

Aleatory day
breaking open
in flashbulb blur
over the hush
and din one moment
jaggedly ushers out-in
with its collapsing magic fold
Brooklyn is like a lung
we fill with our petty noise
our thuggish orange pockets of noise
which rush each jellyfish pulse
of the great grey lung
as it silently huffs
the trees like cilia
the sun only
another commodious orb
for sale
or what
would it mean
to buy light?
Would it mean dice
don’t tell the future?
The signals are all splintering
here at the breath hole
where air vacuums in-out again
and the pigeons fear being breached
I told a stupid lie
about your stupid ugly face
how it dazzled me
in waves of ignorance
wholly my own
skin color waves
how impossible
it seemed
to understand merely
a single face
your stupid ugly face
that the pigeons know
better than I ever will
buckling at each windy cheek
as it heeds the propinquity
of Brooklyn’s bag-like lung-bellow
under the urban sun’s golden shrug

THE POEM

Coming to
almost less
here for being
actually right here
in a viral fog
magic is never settled
so I make everyone’s fingerprints
count in waves of unhinging
to tour the desideratum like seedpods
floating over our soiled silver pools
I wrote you this book
backwards for staving off logic
which pitiless homes in
almost less here now
that I’m thought
responsible for beauty
writing books
for drummers
whose eyes gasp
with each inky
plastic tree’s perforated collapse
I wanted to intone
something something being here again
without appearing redundant or cold
because there’s only this sordid boil
pulsing sensation into drowsy chords
or pulling back from resentment
I lift my arms
over the unending poem
and shyly quiver
like a beast
not occasioned
to standing
on hind legs
my fingers blurring
at each ugly knuckle
until the music begins
its great white unfolding
like a sea of teeth
slicing the poem into organelles
which seem to function interdependently
if by function you mean burst

THE RIVER

Leaving cities
is easier
when you breathe
stupid yellow flowers
through a hidden orifice
wheezing on a pistil
in them dead Eastern woods
where fever gets passed counterclockwise
and the river is always on
like a Boombox made of water
a long blue electric detour
that blacks out in swirls
I named this highway
Face Crisis Smile
in your honor
a no-brainer
taking forever
to untangle
a fucking highway
where fever spreads
in all directions simultaneously
a stupid yellow fever
that we can’t stop breathing
in our dead Eastern woods
where the river is always changing
from one call sign to another
borrowing all its hard K’s
from the cold western airwaves
past Face Crisis Smile
a curtain of trees
we all love
a total fucking
no-brainer
for all
you heavy breathers
knee-deep again
to greet lights-out

THE HORSE

Actually
clamoring open
with joy
the mere fact
of walking here
grown beyond fact
as the stray horse
leaps past all designation
or was a map
of myself turning on?
I could say anything now
in the vibration between selves
like a horse’s rippling flank
makes its conspiracy with greatness
a small and suffocating greatness
in the coarse rush to appear
I am nothing someone needs
or I am I am
the very substance of joy
clamoring open with scarlet tendrils
that break against the song
a hungry horse makes
in its desert ride
wet rhythmic red tendrils
that softly tear off
in gaping chasms
of summer thought
actually encumbered
by sunlight
the coarse
light of horses
stirring up insects
that glitter blissfully
in the contaminating dusk
I am nothing someone
needs more than light
nothing but an intermission
between patterns of self-light
which strobe across the bedroom
tricking every object into cinema
from the depths of hibernation
baroque horses of thought galloping
in the mantic pollution of joy
in the actual body breaking open
to form joy’s map of clamor

THE FLOWERS

Eternally returning
our faces birds
that roost and rut
in the hair’s mussed underbrush
fly away fly fly away fly
a cold idea arising there
in the wings’ frantic waft
the idea of zero
or all that remains
rudely driven out
like a dog
from flowers
huge yellow
ancient flowers
that I send
hurrying everywhere simultaneously
exuding the terror
that comes with understanding
that the universe you
observe serves only excess
The woman you love blows
the nose at the tip
of her tortoise shell glasses
and not even one blinking iota
burns out in an unnecessary flash
The birds our faces are fly
in and out with courageous urgency
which carries us past sleep
and into the startling dawn
of one moment after another
if only to throttle nothingness
in a yellow rage
if only to thread
tatters of your hand
with tatters of sky
and suffer endlessly
in yellow waves
that patiently drone
in and out
eternally returning
huge yellow
ancient flowers

THE SKULL

for CA Conrad

Surfacing utilitarian
my heart warps
to succor or goad
minus the parade of analyses
that stem endless in backwater throbs
I have strode coarse in daylight’s
umbra peeling my friends off
the trees gone furious
in doomed hospitality
I repeat
I repeat myself
having invited these words
by their congress with invisibility
hoping you see fit to need
a warm token of return
as the holes vowels
make brace sentiment
to free
every horny passage
from breath to form
like a brook of pages
lapping the soiled whorl fingers
skim against this brick-mitted world
It’s now that I want less
to know how tomorrow is
merely today’s discount hologram
moving unhurried still
mouth open
eyes slicing closed
through fields of disaster
red fields of endless disaster
where I invite each fluttering curse
to issue its purchase of reason
to wag its winnowing brand
and face the music
discordant bone music
muscle music
music that carves
novel blood in swarms
to bear against the skull
to bear against the skull’s magic

THE MOUTH

It’s autonomic
how pupils scurry
slant by flirt like
brushfire dancing
out mouse and quail
mouth always full
of tooth bells
that toll loosely
waking the snakes
I mean tongues
In between is
and isn’t your legs
scissor the uncomprehending
air stacking volumes
or perhaps that’s unfair
the wind always dizzy
in its wise permutations
the mouth always full
past knowledge
I squiggle in my beard
redly as you
arrive fractious
in the storefront’s glass
fray like a bass
slipping lures
I took sides with death
to oppose it
within without
speech’s jilting need
the mouth always full
the wind parsing what flies
for its modicum of song
the mouth always full
the mouth always full

THE FOREST

Seeming isn’t something
this city will
relinquish lightly
as a morass
of birdsong fills in
and the darkening column
of day wage parts
to reveal its coarse staccato
heart has shred
like bowstrings to trail
dutifully behind in a red fringe
I imagine Napoleon’s horse
whose left hoof became
some rich fucker’s snuffbox
You always preferred the hospitality
of forest people
but what is a city except
a forest made of people
And when it’s spring the colors
of our leaves spar
with the bare and simple
skin of limbs
until the squirrels that are our
hands wind up everything
to a frenzied pitch
A frenzied pitch made of apples

NEONISH

Paper tendons
notating desire
Is it possible
to know why?
or caught simple
the directions run backward
for fear the circumspect
will river the ocean
or vice-versa today
I can’t stop eating tones
in lobby, bedroom, chorus, etc.
The weather inside our decisions
lost amid the damage cold
salutations here made of light
still neonish in the way they
blink open or hum when tired
I rescued at least one feeling
among all the zapped-out axons
because it makes you the difference
air heavy with transformation’s red scent
If only the reticence would lift now
as again the birds lay under blankets
we’ve tossed haphazardly with our mouth junk
I won’t go into it except to
say how deadly the sky looks down
coursing with rivets of tongue-slick dew
I want you to leave the country
as soon as another deserves you
punching floats of greed from currency
The rest is merely follow-through
like Alex English from the elbow
though surgical impressions cloud the hand
in their promise of cocktail epiphany
So now we must break
out what remains of trust structures
to defend the saying of names
and inure beauty from pointlessness
or maybe just go home
through powerful brown woods
telling our jokes silently
on paths obliquely squandering
the love we’ve made
You and I
the moon on
its protractor rise
to please
to arrive
neonish

NOT A FEW WANDER HOMELESS ON DARKSOME PATHS

The snow stops
at our bricks or windows or
it doesn't. It finds
a way into the cool grasp
of thought. It begins snowing through
language even. For hours. I can't
believe how cold it is.


What is this unshaken
peal moving through the memory
of a bell? Is everything
remembered here an appeal
of or to the dead? Just as sunlight
on the sleeper gathers
his shape into new dailiness.


Restless seagulls inch
across the backyard, peck a Casio
keyboard dusted with snow.
Cat prints fill in only
to disappear. In every now another
thing persuades at song’s loss. Leftovers
picked clean. Nuclear morning.


Can it really be so
strenuous, this letting the world
appear? An annual unfolds
or a page curls brown
at the tip. How does one manage
to say brown words? Melody is just
another word for hunger.



What little sadnesses
dance free from the black
backyard cable wires around which clutch
the joyously turned veins
of vines. Even in
the black I sense a blacker black
escape.


We visited your parents.
They bought us fish and tickets.
I broke your glasses.
The wolves are at the door.
This train is stopped due
to traffic ahead. We are sorry
for the inconvenience.


Seagulls gracefully circle
the hastily abandoned
bones of hungry schoolchildren.
It is bird weather where
I live every afternoon at half-past
three. For all
their grace the birds remain cannibals.





Do we ask a mountain
to explain itself? Do we ask blinding
how it became song? A girl
sleeps in the bed. A fine red hair
grows on her arms. My eyes
are clumsy, ensconced. Of course
I love her.


Is the light also as painful on
other planets? Who is more used
to sleep? Half-face, a warm clot
of folds. I bought this black
ring. I wear it
strangely. It does something wicked
to my form.


A rabid bat at
noon. My love and I under a nest
of branches. The pond’s song
playing against
them. Painting’s the tree’s
wish, but it remains doomed
to sculpture.


To protract, as to
elide contract. A tender
eye, as to avoid
a tense one. Otherwise part
of the eye is used to
trap the future. A sentence, as
to obviate ending.



After the rain the static
of birds tentative. A stray
car here or there
like white squall. What would home
be in this city of erupting
knees? This dancing city? You
need to speak up.


Wake neck stiff full less
from dreaming than these
stubbly bits of song. Nowhere’s
salutation. I ask you
where we went just moments
ago? Your fingers reply:
now here.


The whirling ceiling
fan jerks
the cerebellum into pulse
like a wet bell
whose tongue sets
off little forks
of white electric foxtrot.



Let the wit of ants
emerge. Be generous
to the bears. Some
tiny thing needs
time to work itself out
the window. Open
bird for breath.


The clouds in our ears
drain the garbage
truck’s shrill passage. Ad-
vertisements sickly ed-
ify the casual jaunt. Nobody
learns from the trees
on the street anymore.


The fire engines drone
their implausible
reminder: you are not at present
burning. Except that
they are wrong. The fire
engine’s crisis is one
of imagination.


Born of fire in the form
of dust. Ton-specks
speck-tones, stone-light, spectral
tongue to smoke
out a lightning of teeth.
A little fire in our jerk and swerve.
A little dust in our bone-knock.



Walking beneath the beery
twist of summer
branches, foaming
with a flutter of green head, I
teach the children strange
wisdom that will
only serve them in different worlds.


Ugly and beautiful at
once like a camel the tree
trunk’s fulsome
fold-wave works itself
into a standing frenzy
beside the silver sedan as sun
inches past our roof.


Truth is comorbid
with depression and failure
today. Light tuning
the page. Only sensations
that announce
the future from now
on.

ONE MONTH

21


Is all truth an act
of will? How soon
will the previews
for the film of your
life be over? Are we
saying that courtesy
trumps the struggle
against poverty? If
you understand what
the enemy thinks
does he remain on
the offensive? Where
does the hurdling
of stagnant bodies
come to an end?
How does the sun
overcome violence?
Will you remember
that I asked you this
a year from now?
Does the ear fold
to allow compassion?
Can I touch you on
the edge of fury?
When must we cease
to use the world so
compulsively? Could
I love the earth better
than the sky? Will
emancipation continue
invisibly? Is coincidence
the only illustration
of the radical nature of
responsibility? Can it
wait until the coffee
is done? How is each
name condemning
the person it hovers
over? Is guilt what
you call all that boiled
time? When is now
not why’s bitch? Have
the specter of these
hands been a burden
to you? What would it
mean for the world
to be meaningless? Is
there anything more
preposterous? Have
you been listening
to the avenue’s music
this ordinary morning?


22


Can you tell a man
you have only come
to watch him die?
Is our intermittent
love for living offset
by our resentment
at the labor it takes?
Could this century
herald the necessary
reacquaintance of
thought with body?
Have I done enough
to impress moneyed
enterprises? Can’t
the horror of sex
be allayed by total
abandon? Whence
flows this curdle
of intuition? Have
the schools divested
you of what it was
possible to be? Why
does a good person
go into the nightly
rub of faithlessness?
Is it an act of courage
to depend on beings
of innate fallibility?
Should we live by
fact or truth? How
often should wonder
be smothered? Is
this another chance
to do what it is you
have never been
honest enough to
conceive? Doesn’t
the hand itself fly
out in all directions?
Was it too much to
expect an interrogation
of egotism? Why has
place been made void
by complacency? If
love and hate begin
to muddle are we not
doomed? Did you
also wish that bombs
would shake things
up before the towers
fell? Who can escape
this frantic pulsing
to feel the geologies
of time? Is it more
important to create
or cultivate? Why
are my hands still
shaking? Will they
cease engendering
sexual noise amid
city streets? Where
can I get a hallelujah
around here today?


23


Who is responsible
for the psychoacoustics
of streets? What new
emblem drifts torn
in the spindly winter
trees? Can I depend
on the pink barrier
of skin? How imperial
can a woman be? Is
it fair to ask people not
to mutilate themselves?
Why must we encode
lust? Can I deteriorate
the bonds of culture
to see truth? Will it not
bed in contradictions
and rot? Why love
when the mere act of
loving constitutes a
state of friction? Does
her hand around his
neck give him no
pleasure? Beauty’s
not only the seer’s
need to be beautiful
is it? If I scorn god
do I scorn whatever
good lurks in humility?
Is this enormous
grief part of the dead
people? Who better
knows the tidings
of stillness? Perhaps
my own happiness
is merely a symptom
of the universe’s not
stopping? Do you
garrote everything you
find uneconomical?
When will the animals
minimize the human
infraction? Is trade
always asymmetrical
like language? Do
evolution’s dictates
apply equally to
technology? How
rare is this unfolding
day? The gentle way
our hearts rebound
into praise? This rot
that commends us
to the root of waking?
The overlap where
I feel you falling into
each toothsome gap?

ONE MONTH

9


What day doesn’t
alter but everything
irrevocably? Can
we sojourners reject
the blinding instinct
to flee? Who says
nomads don’t desire
provenance over
trees? Is this
the final manner we
own to express our
grief? What about
this beautiful fucking
view and the glory
of traveling through
it? Is perfect lust
possible? Whence this
bandwidth of money’s
feedback? Does repetition
fold us into cascading
bolts of boredom or
eroticism or both? Can
you fashion me
some breathable variety?

10


At what point do
the interruptions
common to the act
of interpretation
diminish us? How can
grammar alone leave
me out of breath? Does
love’s indemnity obscure
love itself? How many
ATMs justify the
closing of CBGBs?
Who doesn’t die
from complications?
Is chemistry the chair
we keep falling out
of? Are stars serious
about death? Shouldn’t
one fear the mere
act of writing? Does
each moment retain
its perpendicular goings
on? Why won’t you
give me the answers?


11


Whose black seas are
these unsteadily pouring
into my eyes? Does
racism in collusion
with temperature? Can
our fevering return us
to the electron’s frenzied
hearth? Are you also
a little world so cunningly
made? Do these genii
that speak through our
mouths need help as well?
Where is the sky going?
Where would I be without
these prepositions? Do
philosophers find themselves
hungry for catastrophe?
For whom does this black
wire shudder into shape?
Is vanity throttled less
vain? How often must one
revisit this old blood
jet made precious?


12


Is superstition an
appropriate term
for courting forces
of chaos into step?
Why do our pets
trust us? How is
black symptomatic?
If I forget the color
of your face can I be
said to remain in love
with you? Haven’t
these light-shreds
rent our apartment
into wood-tatters
yet? Why do we use
the plural ‘are’ in
addressing what
would seem to be
the singular ‘you’?
In other words how
is you? What’s wrong
with your happiness?
How does another’s
body intuit how your
limbs will dodge what
it brings into transit?
Can everyone be said
to speak a unique
dialect? Is this organ
for signaling regret?
Does an apprehension
of the end partially
allow its eventuality?
13


Does our architecture
reflect a lusting after
hierarchy? How come
I’m continuously falling
behind? How does hot
dog damage soul? Do
clouds flit about without
disdain? Is school just
another concession
to self-reliance’s loss?
Is there a premonition
of humanity in all cells?
Which of these new
horizons will limit words?
When will the trees give
up and speak? Is each
gait expressive of death?
Is each step a prelude
to collapse? Which isn’t
the way that leads me
to my? And who deigns
to instantiate the final
dispersal of signs? How
wholly struck arrives
life today?


14


Can I fill in one
tone after another
with color without
losing fact? Could
this really be all we
need to perceive
reality? Was cinema
inevitable? Should
you intimate your
capacity for desire
from capacity of your
intimates? How
often returns fact’s
niggling certitude?
Didn’t we deserve
at least this pulsing
dawn death? How
many more times
can we abide by
shoestring catches
of the mind? Is there
a limit to the heart
going timid before
privation? Can I name
this a whirl of ecstatic
commodities? Was
this everything you
felt about canceling
hope? Could our
unmaking begin in
a blaze of the inane?
Was every possible
life intercepted by
a lack of virtue? Is
this a vertical ledger
of despair? Who is it
that gets off on
such wintry stuff?

ONE MONTH

5


How does one beat
back the profusion
of surface? Where
does the eye orbit in
its desire for a world
of wincing depth?
Don’t these trucks
strike whatever lurks
worrying in your gut
with their rattle?
What natural legacy
might justify this
endless using we
make of the world?
When is an individual
not but constantly on
trial?


6


Does the pink fish
of your tongue slip
silence in between
its dark verbiage?
When will this you
you mistake for
others emerge from
plain view? How
often does Sunday
damn intransigent
thought? Would it
be asking too much
for our feelings to
instruct us? Where
absconds this red
tincture of muscle
and bone? Do one
and two work to
foster their simple
distance?


7


Whose crowd is
this swirl of gulls?
How can one live
with any resistance
to the rod and cone’s
effortless despotism?
Would I lie silently
just to feel the still
majesty of inorganic
matter? What bodies
don’t coincide? Why
wear thin the veil
of truth when one
might simply doff
it altogether? Can’t
the song go on even
in the singer’s loss?
Of man or of sun?


8


When does one begin
such accounting as
doubtless accompanies
the loss of the possible?
If advertisements are
so benign why do her
glazed eyes nauseate
so thoroughly? Is this
other’s breath lacing
our own with clout or
death? Where have all
those uninterrupting
clouds gone? Does
the host’s stain linger
on the tongue? Why
does the hand end
in this creepy wave
of fingers? If I own
a teepee do I have
the onus to perform
spiritual duties? Who
doesn’t prefer living
outside the tyranny of
financial abstraction?

ONE MONTH

28


Is this the worst finally
upon us? How much
joy do you think you
can sustain? Why do
this girl’s fingers sway
like pennants when
she talks? From where
issue the hollow forces
of irony? Can I drink
what the throat thinks?
Really? Is now when
what coagulates in mind
finds purchase in heart?
Don’t you have something
worse to do? What’s
wrong with tendering
ambiguity? Can the air
you breathe become
the site of some ecstatic
unraveling? If utopia
linguistically denotes
a place without place
can it have any ethical
stability? Why do these
bilious waves of guilt
winter in my gullet?
Can the movements
toward happiness accrue
in radical environments?
Why is this fallen petal
malingering unnoticed?
Does the mere fact of
living implicate one’s
responsibility to try
dying? Would you all
step a little nearer? Why
does the body insist
on remaining so sure
about the ineptitude
of consciousness? Now
isn’t the succoring
time is it? Where flies
life at such impossible
moments? Does the end
of the month mean
that these words mean
something more? Don’t
the bags in the trees
seem to shudder and
weep today? Wither
fawns this emasculate
cosmology? How much
money does an honest
woman need? Can’t
we just lie in the ribs
of this rusting truck
until the sun comes
up again? Why do we
keep the representations
of our loved ones next
to the representations
of our pecuniary worth
within the folds of some
dead animal’s skin? How
horrific sounds the literal?
If I proffer you my hand
with tidings of humility
will you lead me forth
in this year of blistering
joy? Can you sustain
the amity of my hands?


1


Does each
trouble come
from the fact
that our eyes
lie at the acme
of our face?


2


Is silence speech
that doesn’t quite
reach the surface?
Which one hasn’t
sounded at least
the primary depth
of murder?


3


‘Is the cessation
of pain merely
an impoverished
wish?’ Why do
the many only
remember that
they have a body
when it goes bad?
What percentage
of waking life
should be spent
pursuing spiritual
enlightenment?


4


What does it mean
to call a human
being holy? Is rap
a hymn to rage?
Does this white
smile salvation
light look eerie
with reckoning so
close? Who loves
you like a slave?

ONE MONTH

26


Has the dollarstore
become another national
symbol? Do the variously
ethnic models in this
beer ad on the 5 train
get drinks together
after the shoot? What
is so deadly American
about perfect teeth?
Can the engagement
with one’s local tongue
excuse the onus
of tackling others?
Are you getting off
at Wall Street or
further down the
ladder? Does every
dream have a secret
lever so as to revolve
into nightmare? Does
the availability of the
current phone strip
it of its brrringing
magic? In what tender
lurks the treasury
of the heart? Don’t it
hurt, this recycling
from bone to bone?
Where would we be
without the U-turn
of humiliation? Must
I always get paid
by the hour? Whence
arrives the chortle
borne by the intimacy
of death? What of
the portion of you that
samples annihilation
among friends? How
heavy hangs the brow
of all ungenerous lovers?
Are all statements
lost in the underlying
ballistics of the question?
What astound us
more than coming
under the slow ease
of wealth? Does this
administration have all
its dicks in a row? Why
wend one’s interior
around the shapeliness
of distant shadows?
Can the rich survive
without war? Does each
bill blow awkwardly
through the mind’s dull
commerce? What dream
is dreamt in the vaults
at night? Is this canceling
dawn the antidote
to time’s horror? How
now? How often we
weary? What new boat
arrives in memory’s
stagnant mooring? If
I say I love you does
that mean I will soon
be owing you money?


27


Is the plagiarism
of future works
a poet’s occupation?
Can new relationships
be forged without
magnetism? Why
waste time loving
the irreparable?
Could the answers
in the trees be
forged of invisible
substances? When
does the ambivalence
about surveillance turn
into revolt? Shouldn’t
there be a name for
the loss of ontological
culture? How come
this hanging takes
so long? Who isn’t
afraid of the ghosts
wind makes of air?
And who doesn’t
desire the membrane
of their embraces
anyhow? Where do
I slur my pattern’s
weft so as to invite
the real? What does
the cat think a sneeze
is? How long will I
be able to inhabit
this class structure?
Why don’t children
name themselves?
Are we allowed to
imagine Adam as
a child? Who says
society’s preservation
trumps the spiritual
requirement for orgy?
Why has this parcel
of land not endeared
itself to someone
enough to harbor
a name? Names aren’t
simply tools for oppression
are they? Who still puts
stock in the hierarchy
of narcissists? Why not
move to some remote
Canadian wood and start
over? Why begin again
when the end is so near?
What is less possible than
not choosing? How do
you like my white smile
salvation light? Can I
touch you in dusk’s
winnowing gully? Why
not? How often does
this dose of finitude
encroach on our daily
wreckage? Won’t you
entangle a little every
day with me? Doesn’t
that ship out on the edge
of the horizon shame
us with its honesty?

ONE MONTH

24


Is there a will
to beauty? Does the
ear demand compassion?
Does beauty in horses
arise from a sexual
attraction to power?
What form of living
detracts least from
the others? Do diagonals
replicate an ecology
of resistance? Another
life might be too
many, right? Can
thought avail itself
of the eye’s weaknesses?
Do images necessitate
a force toward the eventual
obliteration of difference?
If religion and logic
are mutually exclusive
shouldn’t we rid ourselves
of them both? Are we
doomed to love
what entertains us?
Are fingerprints our
initial admissions
of guilt? What surface
doesn’t implicate only
another inexhaustible
depth? If we move fast
enough in arbitrary
directions will we cease
to appear? Is gravity
that mute vector that
explains all else?
How ugly can an
organ of pleasure
be? Do you still
fear words? This ninety
degree angle at the corner
of the page doesn’t lead
to the murder inherent
in hierarchical structures
does it? What is the
“earth” made of? How
often have you wished
to slough the body’s
nerve sleeve? Can
space exist without
the coterminous
abstraction of time?
Doesn’t the word
“man” begin to strike
you as being just
a little humiliating?
Does the occurrence
of clouds allow
metaphor’s genesis in
the “primitive” mind?
Does every prize fail
by dint of redundancy?
Is help finally on
the way or have we
ceased to need it?


25


Is subjectivity subject
to ridicule? Do molecules
know better the benefits
of community? Are
questions merely the effect
of being a thing among
things? Where is light
more cinematic than on
the fading vertical face
of the house across
the street at five o’clock?
Is the location of Earth’s
orbit partly responsible
for nostalgia? How is it
that certain animals seem
always to desire what
haphazard affection we
can muster upon arriving
home? When is this
poem best suited
to history? Why do
the trees stand for all
our conjecture? Carry
this fulsome parcel
of energy past its humble
origins, will you? Can’t
dusk trouble us a little
more in this dingy epoch
of bulbs? Did you ever
find your answer in
a song for devout
“primitives” whose
language you had no
way of deciphering?
What is less important
than thought? How has
each name become razed
from the topography
of the epileptic’s brain?
Is it dark yet? Have your
eyes adjusted? Does
the pestle grind away
at your resolve? Do you
grow hearts like a shark
loses teeth or need three
like an octopus? I
wonder what the news
will hate tonight? Was
the corpse of the Chinese
prisoner pliant in the hands
of the sculptor? Why
can I not leave my body
to the animals of the field?
Will night’s chill erase
the tediousness of our
concerns? Join me for
a walk into the already
opening horizon, won’t
you? How come I have
ceased breathing in
normal intervals? Who
is the you you prefer
to leave behind? Will
it disturb us too
radically to go back
to an existence free
from the sins incurred
by agriculture?

UNMANUAL, PART I

Start with the world
We say don’t paint yourself
Into a corner but think
How ridiculous the word is
To begin with
Start with the world
One animal
Among others
A man is an idea
Had by an upright animal
Overdosing on protein
Start with the world
The single hair that will soon
Cling airily to neighbors
The impediments we only fail
To breach because
Our bodies are temporarily
Too large
Start with the world
Which does not disturb you
For no reason
The square of tamed light
That hovers at the conclusion
Of the room
There are arms
Dangling or thrown in
Ease or fury
Everywhere
Start at the airport
Of the city that overlooks
A sea you cannot drink
The sky is on
Fire at least twice
Every day
Start without
Shame at the abundance
Your eyes leech
From the periphery
Your eyes used up
Until you sense the necessity
For lovelier organs
For want of a compass
You will cross into immense
And once forsaken territories
Where the language of mute vectors
Like light like electrons or
The urging of gravitational bodies
Is audible still
If I speak of time I only succeed
In discrediting grace
We are all gravitational bodies
Where are we all
Headed?
Start as often as you sense
An aversion to it
The body that is
Now anew
That is to say
You are becoming another
Thing wholly astray
There is no pausing
In wonder
At the wreck of the world
Which is rearranging
Past sleep
You can slow
Down or speed
Up but only at
The same time
Start with the bird
Whose name you don’t
Know now laughing
In its lilac bough
Revisit the bed
At inopportune moments
Watch the coyote
Frisking amid the man’s scattered
Articles until your back
Falls into spasm
Every statement belies
A splinter
Of immanent questions
Breathe as though it were possible
Not to
Fall into spasm
Whenever the phone rings you
Should look at a stranger
Before answering
Begin again
At the quest things
Demand from the habitation
Of air
You share
The molecules of the potato
Stolid with their lack
Of charisma nevertheless
Siphon some morning’s triumphant
Bandwidth of sun
Start with the song
Friends make in their enmity
Of night’s passing
Under the emaciated daybreak
Clouds as gypsy cabs
Scuttle forth in Spanish
Radio brain-squawks
This is the morning the cowardly
Fear
When every glancing
Atom starts over
As it has
Every morning of existence
The trees grinning inwardly
At our hopeless rush
Into open air
Which openly harangues
Us in its patent
Refusal to draw close
Today the air tickles
The back of your throat
Like a daring lover
Who fears not the conspiratorial
Plunge it
Probably invented
Like Ellsworth Kelly
Said, “I wanted to recognize things”

FACSIMILES

Sunday morning sun coming
Up over the punctuated
Factory glass of Erie
Pennsylvania, the Erie
Beer Company closed
Forever, green scrap cranes
Still, flaccid almost
As gleaming heaps
Of disassembled metal
Split the light in all
Directions, basking
At Erie’s fringes
The sun’s almost
Solemn orb striated
By fingers of cloud
It nonetheless gobbles
Neon at the borders
Leaving Erie on
A cramped, acrid Amtrak
Scribbling on a snack
Car napkin heading North

OF/OFTEN/OFF

after Lisa Young


You are the center of every
Someone is speaking well of you
You are heading for a land of
Days of the month
You will inherit a large sum of
A diversity of friends is a credit
Speak only well of people and you
Take advantage of your great
You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy
Of good judgment
You are full of a sense of urgency
The best prophet of the future is
Out of an old routine
The love of your life will appear
You have a deep appreciation of
All the preparation you’ve done will
Finally be paying off!
You have a keen sense of humor
You are a person of culture
Your spirit of adventure leads you
As the sweetness of coffee
In a place of cool climate
Wisdom of the ages
Of great adventures
Of interest
The path of life shall lead
The secret of getting ahead
The enjoyment of life
Is often a lonely one
Keep true to the dreams of
Your versatility is one of your outstanding
You are one of the people who
There is a prospect of a thrilling
Simplicity of character is the
Happiness of your life
Art is the
Accomplice of love
You’ll have all sorts of
Your present line of work
Of victory
Soon you will be sitting on top of
God of fortune
You are a bundle of energy
You are a lover of words
And like the role of provider
The star of riches is shining
At the touch of love, everyone
You will always possess
A charm and a sense of
Sometimes the object of the journey is
Off

DANCING WITH DISTANT PARTNERS - Luce Irigaray

With the objective and subjective losing their boundaries. With each one of all "things" resting one in the other, pouring themselves out one into the other without bounds. A recalling of a state so long past that few can manage to do it...Entrusting to the other the very rhythm of their breathing...Putting language, the precinct of Being, into danger so that it might regain its voice. Its song...Where the only guide is to call out to the other. Whose breath subtly suffuses the air, like a vibration sensed by those distraught with love.


Here Irigaray is talking about the "venture" a poet must make to get beyond the "inert sky of thought" that man has for so long labored falsely within, with the possibility that he might reach something primary, existential, real. This venture begins with the dissolution of dualisms, which unwieldy work like tripwires against the elegance of his dancing. In this new field that her feet step into, she cannot measure herself against “things” as such, but must move within the net of “things,” which have similarly dissolved, and now present only the interpenetrations of their proximity. The poet pours forward, stepping ahead, tracing no path except the one born from a contingency of movement. In this field, the only wrong step is the one laid knowingly; the only way to lose direction is to look for a compass. The poet steps into the already altering topography of his nearest leanings, as if the horizon had been brought to his immediacy, relenting in elastic distortions to his every movement. This is why the venture requires the recalling of a state “so long past that few can manage to do it.” It is situated in the already. The path remains at the beginning of the step, where what is given spreads out, and where the gift of air surrounds one with the necessity of its embrace, flooding the lungs with reasons to continue. And continue they do, pulsing in and out with the advent of air, falling into the rhythm of breath, which is necessarily shared, perpetuating the conspiracy we make with the other, entraining the two in an improvisatory and porous corporeality. The two that is no longer two, but a shifting conglomerate of forces, all caught up in the movement beyond or before thought, which commends the body into flux, the dance made by those who trust the world and call it sufficient.

This is where the song intercedes. One hears the call, as hearing is the primary sense: immediate, proximate, uncontrollable. The call of the world falls upon us with all its solicitous appeal, resounding direly but without threat. The only threat arrives from within, as one must move past the false hope of thought, that which craves its constructed peace, its false balance, its façade of control that rests heavily upon the flimsiest of conceptual borders. The singer must plant her foot blindly, moving in trust toward the world’s appeal. The singer opens his mouth, forming the shape of disclosure, and pulls air’s swirl into the rhythmic bell of his lungs. What arrives revives itself in the body’s dangerous bloom, which obliterates all delicacy, splitting language’s tenuous ligature, splaying literature into its origins as song. Song is the conspiracy air carries from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear. Here Irigaray mistakes the nature of this conspiracy, which is not subtle. The song is ongoing, patient beyond the need of nuance or inflection. The song is direct, as only the most fundamental facets of existence can be, which isn’t to say that it doesn’t swerve or zag or suffuse the world with what Grosz calls “pivots of unpredictability.” This is the movement of throes, those flights of imbalance that eviscerate geometry, galloping direct yet directionless in the unadorned freedom air provides. This is the movement known to lovers, who find themselves raw, and receive each febrile jolt the body suddenly tunes into its porous orbit. The body is a radio, but more than that it is an instrument. The singer opens her mouth and sings back to the world its ongoing call, responding with intemperate glee, returning and retuning her own cells to the oscillatory embrace air makes of us all.