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