Here a Narrative, There a Narrative, Everywhere a Narrative Narrative

OK trouble           now a test           when
suddenly everyone begins to grin
                    at you      what do you do

                                        [has been forever grinning]

everyone constantly eats crickets
                what Mexican market      can you not find
       your way out of
                                         [cricket cricket]


how are you dizzy in the stalls
         who aims the pistol at his son
                    who cuts patterns in vellum
                              who built the wall around the lake



OK junior exec        mugged in the capital
when you were kidnapped and rolled
           did you think             this is not the man
                      I should die with

                                         [or did you think]

I want him to kiss me and another way of saying so

                                         [he left a spark on my lip]

        the taxi that took him away
                   was a gold spear

                                         [he ran a spear through my lip]

a thousand candles           had sunk
           to the bottom of a lake

                 were cast by the kidnappers
                             cast from a single mold     and held there

                                         [looking for looking for looking for you]

one singer      two speakers        four ears          more crickets

                   the drum machine

                          the need

                    to be made         not right

STING

Rushed for want of waiting,
cactus spines pierce, draw blood,
and stick. Broken ends like

collar bones flushed with wine.
From this skin spines spike
out somewhere apart from the
puncture. Imagine three steps

to a temporary building, one-time prose
hospital, fragmented into words and
passed one step in time.

Bullets and Numbering

Two shots rang through the morning, an unfamiliar machine I woke up under
in a garage in Pine Bush— even the trees were bungalows— floor inching
toward the ceiling carpet by carpet, a black dome barbecue, box of 11 inch
matches, light—bulb dangling from a thin wire suggesting a great luminous
orchid sprouting through the roof, sizzling in the rain—a huge plunging orchid
suggesting somewhere a bird was lurching through the sky lugging ridiculous
beak. I opened the garage door 11 inches and in rolled my love saying it’s just
hunters in the woods, dear, it’s probably just hunters and anyway come out the snow
is melting in the driveway, the crocuses are inching upwards.

The Full Furnace

A book is not a continent. “Not all of you will fit.”
Me and Walt would ride out with butterfly-nets and
jam-jars. It was like some kind of map. When we
woke, though, she was gone. It was darkest under the
canopy. A streak of light flashed through the sky.
We laughed. A book is like a hat.

Sky Trembles

Sky trembles shouldering another
Butterball redbird sesame piston.

Suffering guide welcomes colossus:
Background hesitate paperwhite bone.

SIGMA EPSILON BLOODBATH

When Angie locks the doors, the sound will stop
outside a final time. And now the sound
of girls forever scattering, alone
in novel corners, like in hide and seek.
Excoriated Chris would walk without
and see Renee, who sees the walking dead,
who says, “mlugh, mleh…” communicating gore
before she lies beside the couch to sleep.
The thudding steps are moving through the rooms
to search, and later to appreciate.
The closet shakes with Ruth, conceals in shirts
her nodding form. He rattles at the door
and silence answers back. Leaving the house, whom
she patiently abides. But she’s found by cops.

LAKEHOUSE II

An overheated imagination
will follow dresses up the stairs, or Leigh
unmaking the bed in waves of motion—
so Paul has left his body. There in clouds
of pot, his face that wanders up, and not
in self—regard. The turning image over,
the losing shape, become a gruel to eat,
and sleep is offering the favored plates…
In darkness wakes, the weight his head will lead
outside without his hearing branches break.
His eyes are turned at shadows flung against
the wall inside the second floor—until
his melting body hits the ground, and shakes
free of its urges, lost in cricket churps.

PILED INTO SAFE LOCATIONS

The girl with the kiddie pool
bunched around her feet
is performing a maladroit
sex show on my precious lawn.

“Go hum like penicillin
in his mechanized tulips
to cure the clap of every thought,”
she encourages.

This pentagram of brats,
spotted and dripped over,
has queued around her.
They disobediently strum
their parts.

“Oh why must everyone’s property value
be subjugated to my S&M nightmares?”
I snivel into my folded wall of hands,
tear ducts lapping back a certain
TV dinner nostalgia.

Now, out of the pitch vacuum
of the girl’s smeared–open mouth
gunning into segments through the innocent
screen of my front porch, comes
a generous selection of neckties.

Piled into safe locations,
my neighbors are stuck
dialing the headquarters
of one government agency
after the other.

I clock her gifts around me,
considering how to fill out
a police report with gentle concern.

On the bottom, I write:
“Remember to thank girl
for wardrobe accessories
before pulling switch.”

June in Autumn

Sir, it’s time. The grand time for the absurd.
Deposed hombres have changed from sullen to merry—
Free to ravish and soothe the little piano ladies.

During the fourth note, he anchors his column to her extreme fruits;
She concedes to his anchor, providing he keeps the tempo.
His fruits join hers until they both reach maturity. Hell, it’s spring!
Not like that sad wine they sip in distant autumns.

She is not ravaged on some over–priced furniture, nor left for later.
She alone is lunged alone. He spit out his frog on her.
Screw it, let me be plain: she is on fire and not sullen and he is a living tornado.
Peaceful in the void, he farts the frog aria.

GLACIER

Flattened in the wind, captivated
by a stir, I am made obsolete
by my own swelling, the inner grinding,

the ribs like sleeping teeth
that will open with a wretched moan
and chomp through this body.

Exiting toward the elements,
I find I can’t be democratic. I enjoy
defiling the sanctuaries of others,

tipping one object out of place. I was born
of an attic key, leaden and black and scuffed.
I walked down the folding stairs.

I was dressing in cobwebs like a haunted house.
My chest aches heavily in its freezing throes.
I was born of a magical book

bursting from silence, a chimera
in my dream, dying free of this cold.
The ensuing waves will destroy my hometown,

the brittle gazeboes, the awkward parochial
schools, the bakeries, museums and hotels,
trampolines in backyards. I was born

of a mother and a father. I swam
in the chlorinated pool.
I walked wet through the house,

like nitrogen, how the cold
can make you lonely, how the water
can make you reminisce.

THE HUMAN LAMB

I tore the lambs apart.
I laid down in the field,
breathed in through my bones
and expelled movement.

The smoke was my first sign
of something approaching on the plain—
where I was born and had rolled
in the mud fearing this day.

I ripped one of my own limbs off
for the sake of empathy.
Here we are, in this courtroom,
about to convict an innocent man.

I warned you about the wallet-black
voice of the scythe swinging
on a moonlit night.
I warned you of the troubles.

The meat had been gamey. We threw
it in the brook. On that sweltering morning
mosquitoes, tan from the heat, slapped
us out of dreaming, helped

us concentrate on the work:
separating skin from bone.
Keeping bone. We favored survival
over surviving.

A History of Gonads

If you ask me to reveal the snail in my nostril, I will of course be shy.
I once inverted all the algorithms to expose the charm of my nose.

If you request the papers which suggest the contents of my spleen, I will list every reason
             why.
How come I am always in need of a transfusion of starlight?

Jim writes tonight of the Brazilian rainforest, of corporate greed, and of a rather large
             insidious tick.
Only when I place his words backwards and read them in the mirror do the hidden
             numbers clarify the contents of salt.

I have left a clove of garlic beneath your pillow.
I have considered your request and prayed with you for a son.

Meditate, a moment, on the history of gonads.
Ask if the desert march and sword swallowing were worth it.

You can’t replace your mouth with the gift box of blood I sent parcel post?
You’ve licked the blood tick until all time, even the rainforest, went dry?

Now the testicles descend, one onion at a time.
I am strong, virile, and more than ready to bleed.

As If Surrounded by Commas

I recognized Indian paintbrush and loganberries, and spoke as if surrounded by commas.
I asked my name to the droppings of water buffalo and avoided stepping too deeply into
       myself.

It’s a matter of looking beyond the detour of my own intimate wisdom.
That you present me with the tooth of a wild boar may work to confuse my shadow.

To fit the taste of spicy noodles into a water sluice suggests we hang on.
We reach for the fur of a She-bear and leave to rope the crows.

Turn to me, but speak in apostrophes only.
Return the commas to the healing jar to relinquish my bleed.

When you chopped the red onion and cooked the celery for soup, I smelled how far I’d
             strayed from my life.
I will never leave it again.  It’s all I’ve ever had.

Curled Around Tablets

It could be jagged beaks, or rotors I swallowed,
for the lurching it pulls in my mid.
The pit of acid-jets is the burning dank,
and my posture transitions into clutches.
This sensation is blinded in aisles of products;
the resolvers flourish like toad fucks in vernal pools.

My passage opens a carpet snake’s mouth,
strangling its gullet over sudsy wasps.

I am so still at times I recover,
and stand straight; the ache ashes its mouth
and sleeps, then the clock is aroused,
and the day’s sun readmits me,
bismuth chalk in my carious teeth.

Scorched Rooms

Peeled laminate and a charred wooden spoon,
remnant smoke spirals cock and twist at the only
intact window.

Cracked, white television screen
on a smoldering chunk of rug.
A cooked lemon near the charcoal box
of melted electrical toys— one
burnt doll offers “Hi there” as I advance in range,
and little drops of midi play.

The fresh clothes are laid out
as ashen figures, allegories,
and soon become the pontifications
of an all-grey structural breeze.