INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR for kari edwards

January

Take a year in your
hand—it’s smallness

rumbles like an antique
boxcar in a shoebox

diorama. Dare to
squeeze it. Drum

your fingers in the pleasing
way that fingers do.

Let go of the year. Let
your eyes go after it.


February

Take a murderer
drinking at a Tiki

Lounge. Shower
her with a box

of fingers. Ram
the year of fingers

into a dram of rum.
Add rubble. Say

yes to the advent
of their lord, please,

go easy into that
Good Friday.


March

Rotate your arms
around the eyes

of a giant. Again
time will tell.

Please the yes
box, depress no

levers on the way
there. There

is someone rubbing
on the horizon’s diode.


April

Ever is the ease
of a skybox

at the wet foot
of a rumbling

fjord. Consider death
at the Fish Fry for what

it has to be. Thresh
your marred toenails

into the earth
here. Hear the

sound of its reply.


May

Lace a slim ode
to antique marriage

within the heal
of a red shoe. Rest

under the wetly wreathed
hearth of a lapsing lord.

Ply there the forged
diadem of the mayfly.


June

Pour an arch
of voice over

a triad of heaving
words to ward

off the plight
of high art.


July

There is a light
from which to avert

your eyes. Do
not. You cannot

afford a house among
the eaves during

the trial of the thigh.


August

Replay the daring
waltz of cannons

for the almond-fed
horses. Let each

mongrel pluck
a leaf of evening

with its knotted eye.


September

Lack not a loaf
to repay the elm

for its nutty gruel.
Watch the dance

of the pink
salmon, it alone

knows how to
die without

the nonsense
of intervention.


October

If your hawk dies
on a Monday, wrap

its talon within
a grief-withered

orchid and inter
it where anon

you may repast.
Acknowledge

it with a smile,
but not a laugh.


November

Either paste
a button of cork

onto an awkward
torch-lit ledge

or teach a herd
of stallions

to ride for
a mile behind

a simile. Both
portend luck.


December

A smiling patsy
pretends to idle

near an empty
beehive above

the duck pond.
His treachery

is utterly unknown
to him. When his

gaze turns to
consider the azure

of the sky, steal
his medallion

and bury it
in the orchard.

Many visions shall
spring from apples

eaten from the tree
that sprouts from

this particular spot.

A MONTH OF NOISE

The entire globe surrounded
By quotes, a waitress’
Bronze bangs

Teased into a bouquet
Of trembling waves, cancel
Person, insert

Information demonstrating set
Of person’s reducible
Lures, inside the bakery

There was an elderly man awkwardly
Holding a cake emblazoned
With his granddaughter’s face

A DIAGRAM OF POSSIBLE BELIEFS

At dawn I am still barreling
Through sleep with a luminous piece
Of fruit, as if one

Could peel an infinity
Of questions from a single
Statement, not that

I believe in fruit, but there is something
To be said for the resigned
Way a seed enacts this random

Politics of scatter, but it’s no
Matter, fruit
Doesn’t believe in me either

ANOTHER SELECTION FROM THE INNER MONOLOGUE OF JEFF KOONS

Look, I never asked to be remarkable or singular or even particularly attractive. I never asked to be recognizable or loaded or that guy who every man shields the eyes of his girlfriend from. I once wished to be better, that’s it. Not better than you, not better than everybody else, just better than I was. Perhaps I underestimated how good I was to begin with. Sometimes it’s difficult to assess one’s own greatness. It’s the whole Quantum Mechanics dilemma: when I look into a mirror, my looking necessarily distorts what I see. And apparently it makes me think a great deal less of myself than I actually should. So it was virtually impossible for me know, prior to having entered the world at large, how great I was. And I made a wish. And that wish was to be better than I was, which evidently was pretty darn fantastic. I hope you won’t hold me accountable for how things have turned out—the fame, the regard, my face in all the magazines. It was truly unintentional. And I can understand if you think a balance must be struck. I am prepared to make a new wish; to be less great, to be worse. I will wish to be a little less than what I presently am. Will that suffice? Will that make you happy? Will that finally cancel out all your envy and rage, you petty, insignificant little fuck?

A COLONY OF SEPARATE ORGANISMS

In the sea, a dandelion
Self-disperses, while
Here on asphalt, a womanly

Hobo strikes at a damp matchbook
Sparks fizzling, I saw myself
Breathing and imagined

A tiny tin finger rapping
At my ribs, today
We saw a mangy parrot voicelessly

Traipse a limb, it’s freezing
In Brooklyn and we fear the parrot
Will not survive the night

IGGY

Liquefied tennis ball dog
Piss irrigating the sidewalks
Of the Upper East

Side, or Herzog’s Peruvian
Steed lapping champagne
At the opera steps, uniformly

Do these animal dribblings
Confound me, as when
Through the diaphanous wall

Of the aquarium, a frog
Forges his immaculate hover
And the water barely moves

BECAUSE I OWN THIS RIFLE after William Faulkner

Because I own this rifle
Because I own blood
Because I own my arms and legs
Because I own bones superior to yours
Because I own this blood in my arms
Because I own superior legs
Because I own the bones of this rifle
Because they are superior
I have arms befitting a superior rifle of bones
I have blood because it is superior to yours
I have your legs and arms and bones
And blood because I own them
My blood befits a man who owns a superior rifle
My blood is superior because of the way it owns you
My blood is a series of gleaming white bones
My blood runs thick in its owning
My legs run superior in the fields that they own
My arms dangle from the hammock because they are superior
My feet are superior because they do not wear shoes
My blood does not need shoes because it is superior
My gleaming white bones run thick with blood
My blood will not enter the fields because it is superior
The fields I own because I need not move from the hammock
The hammock is superior because it holds my bones
The rifle is a hammock that desires blood
The arms that hang from this hammock were born to hold superior rifles
Born to own what they shoot
My dangling arms are a way of desiring blood
My blood is desirable because it owns the bones of others
My afternoon is desirable because it does not need shoes
I am fighting you with my desire not to wear shoes
I am fighting the blood and bones of the field with my hammock
I am superior because I fight with a hammock that holds bones
I am superior to you because I can fight without shoes
I am superior to you because I do not move all afternoon
I am superior because others desire my blood
You desire my blood
You desire my gleaming bones because they are superior
You desire to run in my shoes with my superior legs
To run like blood through the fields I own
Because I own this rifle
My arms and legs and blood and bones are superior to yours