You knew the telephone had wires, you could see them overhead
where sparrows sat and chattered together
you alongside a window somewhere phone in hand
listening to tears thickening a throat in a city somewhere else
you muttering back your faulty formulae
ear tuned to mute vibrations from an occupied zone:
an old, enraged silence still listening for your voice
Did you then holding
the phone tongue your own lips finger your naked shoulder as
if you could liquefy touch into sound through wires to lips or shoulders lick
down an entire body in familiar mystery irregardless laws of matter?
Hopeless imagination of signals not to be
received
• • •
From the shores of sickness you lie out on listless
waters with no boundaries floodplain without horizon
dun skies mirroring its opaque face and nothing not
a water moccasin or floating shoe or tree root to stir interest
Somewhere else being the name of whatever once said your name
and you answered now the only where is here this dull floodplain
this body sheathed in indifference sweat no longer letting the fever out
but coating it in oil You could offer any soul-tricking oarsman
whatever coin you’re still palming but there’s a divide
between the shores of sickness and the legendary, purifying
river of death You will have this tale to tell, you will have to live
to tell
this tale
2008
Axel Avákar
Axel Avákar
Axel: backstory
Axel, in thunder
I was there, Axel
Axel, darkly seen, in a glass house
[Axel Avákar: fictive poet, counter-muse, brother]
Axel Avákar
The I you know isn’t me, you said, truthtelling liar
My roots are not my chains
And I to you: Whose hands have grown
through mine? Owl-voiced I cried then: Who?
But yours was the one, the only eye assumed
Did we turn each other into liars?
holding hands with each others’ chains?
At last we unhook, dissolve, secrete into islands
—neither a tender place—
yours surf-wrung, kelp-strung
mine locked in black ice on a mute lake
I dug my firepit, built a windbreak,
spread a sheepskin, zoned my telescope lens
to the far ledge of the Milky Way
lay down to sleep out the cold
Daybreak’s liquid dreambook:
lines of a long poem pouring down a page
Had I come so far, did I fend so well
only to read your name there, Axel Avákar?
Axel: backstory
Steam from a melting glacier
your profile hovering
there Axel as if we’d lain prone at fifteen
on my attic bedroom floor elbow to elbow reading
in Baltimorean August-
blotted air
Axel I’m back to you
brother of strewn books of late
hours drinking poetry scooped in both hands
Dreamt you into existence, did I, boy-
comrade who would love
everything I loved
Without my eyelash glittering piercing
sidewise in your eye
where would you have begun, Axel how
would the wheel-spoke have whirled
your mind? What word
stirred in your mouth without my
nipples’ fierce erection? our
twixt-and-between
Between us yet
my part belonged to me
and when we parted
I left no part behind I knew
how to make poetry happen
Back to you Axel through the crackling heavy
salvaged telephone
Axel, in thunder
Axel, the air’s beaten
like a drumhead here where it seldom thunders
dolphin
lightning
leaps
over the bay surfers flee
crouching to trucks
climbers hanging
from pitons in their night hammocks
off the granite face
wait out an unforetold storm
while somewhere in all weathers you’re
crawling exposed not by choice extremist
hell-bent searching your soul
—O my terrified my obdurate
my wanderer keep the trail
I was there, Axel
Pain made her conservative.
Where the matches touched her flesh, she wears a scar.
—“The Blue Ghazals”
Pain taught her the language
root of radical
she walked on knives to gain a voice
fished the lake of lost
messages gulping up
from far below and long ago
needed both arms to haul them in
one arm was tied behind her
the other worked to get it free
it hurt itself because
work hurts I was there Axel
with her in that boat
working alongside
and my decision was
to be in no other way
a woman
Axel, darkly seen, in a glass house
1
And could it be I saw you
under a roof of glass
in trance
could it be was passing
by and would translate
too late the strained flicker
of your pupils your
inert gait the dark
garb of your reflection
in that translucent place
could be I might have
saved you still
could or would ?
2
Laid my ear to your letter trying to hear
Tongue on your words to taste you there
Couldn’t read what you
had never written there
Played your message over
feeling bad
Played your message over it was all I had
To tell me what and wherefore
this is what it said:
I’m tired of you asking me why
I’m tired of words like the chatter of birds
Give me a pass, let me just get by
3
Back to back our shadows
stalk each other Axel but
not only yours and mine Thickly lies
the impasto
scrape down far enough you get
the early brushwork emblems
intimate detail
and scratched lines underneath
—a pictograph
one figure leaning forward
to speak or listen
one figure backed away
unspeakable
(If that one moved—)
but the I you knew who made
you once can’t save you
my blood won’t even match yours
4
“The dead” we say as if speaking
of “the people” who
gave up on making history
simply to get through
Something dense and null groan
without echo underground
and owl-voiced I cry Who
are these dead these people these
lovers who if ever did
listen no longer answer
: We :
5
Called in to the dead: why didn’t you write?
What should I have asked you?
—what would have been the true
unlocking code
if all of them failed—
I’ve questioned the Book of Questions
studied gyres of steam
twisting from a hot cup
in a cold sunbeam
turned the cards over lifted the spider’s foot
from the mangled hexagon
netted the beaked eel from the river’s mouth
asked and let it go
2007–2008
Ballade of the Poverties
There’s the poverty of the cockroach kingdom and the rusted toilet bowl
The poverty of to steal food for the first time
The poverty of to mouth a penis for a paycheck
The poverty of sweet charity ladling
Soup for the poor who must always be there for that
There’s poverty of theory poverty of swollen belly shamed
Poverty of the diploma or ballot that goes nowhere
Princes of predation let me tell you
There are poverties and there are poverties
There’s the poverty of cheap luggage bursted open at immigration
Poverty of the turned head averted eye
The poverty of bored sex of tormented sex
The poverty of the bounced check poverty of the dumpster dive
The poverty of the pawned horn of the smashed reading glasses
The poverty pushing the sheeted gurney the poverty cleaning up the puke
The poverty of the pavement artist the poverty passed out on pavement
Princes of finance you who have not lain there
There are poverties and there are poverties
There is the poverty of hand-to-mouth and door-to-door
And the poverty of stories patched up to sell there
There’s the poverty of the child thumbing the Interstate
And the poverty of the bride enlisting for war
There is the poverty of stones fisted in pocket
And the poverty of the village bulldozed to rubble
There’s the poverty of coming home not as you left it
And the poverty of how would you ever end it
Princes of weaponry who have not ever tasted war
There are poverties and there are poverties
There’s the poverty of wages wired for the funeral you
Can’t get to the poverty of bodies lying unburied
There’s the poverty of labor offered silently on the curb
The poverty of the no-contact prison visit
There’s the poverty of yard-sale scrapings spread
And rejected the poverty of eviction, wedding bed out on street
Prince let me tell you who will never learn through words
There are poverties and there are poverties
You who travel by private jet like a housefly
Buzzing with the other flies of plundered poverties
Princes and courtiers who will never learn through words
Here’s a mirror you can look into: take it: it’s yours.
for James and Arlene Scully
2009
Emergency Clinic
Caustic implacable
poem unto and contra:
I do not soothe minor
injuries I do
not offer I require
close history
of the case apprentice-
ship in past and fresh catastrophe
The skin too quickly scabbed
mutters for my debriding
For every bandaged wound
I’ll scrape another open
I won’t smile
while wiping
your tears
I do not give
simplehearted love and nor
allow you simply love me
if you accept regardless
this will be different
Iodine-dark
poem walking to and fro all night
un-gainly
unreconciled
unto and contra
2008
Confrontations
It’s not new, this condition, just for awhile
kept deep
in the cortex of things imagined
Now the imagination comes of age
I see ourselves, full-lipped, blood-flushed
in cold air, still conflicted, still
embraced
boarding the uncharter’d bus of vanishment
backward glances over and done
afterimages
swirl and dissolve along a shoal of footprints
Simple ghouls flitter already among our leavings
fixing labels in their strange language
But
up to now we’re not debris
(only to their fascinated eyes)
2009
Circum/Stances
A crime of nostalgia
—is it—to say
the “objective conditions”
seemed a favoring wind
and we younger then
—objective fact—
also a kind of subjectivity
Sails unwrapped to the breeze
no chart
• • •
Slowly repetitiously to prise
up the leaden lid where the forensic
evidence was sealed
cross-section of a slave ship
diagram of a humiliated
mind high-resolution image
of a shredded lung
color slides of refugee camps
Elsewhere
(in some calm room far from pain)
bedsprings a trunk empty
but for a scorched
length of electrical cord
how these got here from where
what would have beheld
Migrant assemblage: in its aura
immense details writhe, uprise
• • •
To imagine what Become
present thén
within the monster
nerveless and giggling
(our familiar our kin)
who did the scutwork
To differentiate
the common hell
the coils inside the brain
• • •
Scratchy cassette ribbon
history’s lamentation song:
Gone, friend I tore at
time after time
in anger
gone, love I could
time upon time
nor live nor leave
of spies and squatters
tongues and genitals
All violence is not equal
(I write this
with a clawed hand
2008
Winterface
i. hers
Mute it utters ravage guernican
mouth in bleak December
Busted-up lines of Poe:
—each separate dying ember
wreaks its ghost upon the floor
January moon-mouth
phosphorescence purged in dark to
swallow up the gone
Too soon
Dawn, twilight, wailing
newsprint, breakfast, trains
all must run their inter-
ruptured course
—So was the girl moving too fast she was moving fast
across an icy web
Was ice a mirror well the mirror was icy
And did she see herself in there
ii. his
Someone writes asking about your use
of Bayesian inference
in the history of slavery
What flares now from our burnt-up
furniture
You left your stricken briefcase here
no annotations
phantom frequencies stammer
trying to fathom
how it was inside alone where you were dying
2009
Quarto
1
Call me Sebastian, arrows sti
cking all over
The map of my battlefields. Marathon.
Wounded Knee. Vicksburg. Jericho.
Battle of the Overpass.
Victories turned inside out
But no surrender
Cemeteries of remorse
The beaten champion sobbing
Ghosts move in to shield his tears
2
No one writes lyric on a battlefield
On a map stuck with arrows
But I think I can do it if I just lurk
In my tent pretending to
Refeather my arrows
I’ll be right there! I yell
When they come with their crossbows and white phosphorus
To recruit me
Crouching over my drafts
Lest they find me out
And shoot me
3
Press your cheek against my medals, listen through them to my heart
Doctor, can you see me if I’m naked?
Spent longer in this place than in the war
No one comes but rarely and I don’t know what for
Went to that desert as many did before
Farewell and believing and hope not to die
Hope not to die and what was the life
Did we think was awaiting after
Lay down your stethoscope back off on your skills
Doctor can you see me when I’m naked?
4
I’ll tell you about the mermaid
Sheds swimmable tail Gets legs for dancing
Sings like the sea with a choked throat
Knives straight up her spine
Lancing every step
There is a price
There is a price
For every gift
And all advice
2009
Black Locket
It lies in “the way of seeing the world”: in the technical sacredness of seeing that world.
—Pier Paolo Pasolini, of his film Accatone
The ornament hung from my neck is a black locket
with a chain barely felt for years clasp I couldn’t open
Inside: photographs of the condemned
Two
mystery planets
invaded from within
• • •
Pitcher of ice water thrown in a punched-in face
Eyes burnt back in their sockets
Negative archaeology
• • •
Driving the blind curve trapped in the blind alley
my blind spot blots the blinding
beauty of your face
• • •
I hear the colors of your voice
2009
Generosity
Death, goodlooking as only a skeleton can get
(good looks of keen intelligence)
sits poised at the typewriter, her locale, her pedestal