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a journal of literature & art

The Literary Review

Issue 10                    Page 34

Itinerary

Traveling north’s a misnomer, but somewhere

            strings connect until light begins

and then perhaps falls into shade as day’s ending,

            creating its parable

that only fractaled can read.

            You may end again before you know

what to do, but a story of bodies

            evolving may press in on you,

too. If you go further north, you’re doomed to be cold,

            but if you go south again stars set

into water, and it gets so murky

            that areas of shade can’t find a way.

If you stay north, you may be in for some fun,

            and if you head west space will

open out before you, though you may be puzzled

            by synergy of trees

that you find there (and there are wheels).

            An edge of irony that you’re permitted will stay

to still a stone that burrows at your center,

            whichever way you decide to take your traveler’s course.

But a body knows what a home is,

            although each scene can feed fragments

back beyond you, and out.

            And if home is a place where you see belong

emblazoned across the new skyscrapers,

            then why not write instructions, your new part?

As if to find an edge of some other sky,

            you pretend at leaving, cross the lines.

You’ll write a questionnaire again,

            and leave it by a station.

You’ll check in with your own attunement,

            the place where you last left a thread.

Suspicious of structure, now go forth.

What Earth Might Say
                    Her light fled —William Blake

Material particles:

a place for gratitude feels heavy as they search for you.

Everything to earth is an answer, for

a labyrinth of mirrors cannot hold her

close. Which city would you bother to fall down in?

Which set of darknesses would you take to a temple?

Oh: you’ve moved past religion

but still rely on a positive crush to make cinnamon

recede, as if invoking where

a harbormaster gets his bearings once again.

(A silent neutrino is one, 

salient, who embellishes a featherless bed with new meaning,

cutting out malignancy of youth.)

Earth’s light dissipates into atoms unhexed

by light from an earliest good book.

They will keep their search up.

You may one day be able to escape.

Their proof is almost a new evidence

that wears itself on thinnest of sleeves

like untoward ambiance.

Endurance Test

Flowers: minky, enduring winter

and who is the you behind them?

You see what you can through new glasses,

unwind tethers for a moment.

Is every garden inside

an adorned apex, or are some much plainer?

It all comes down to flowers, once again here.

A town is exposed for its proximity

to its inhabitants’ happiness,

as if reinventing fresh atoms

by removing a dime from the center

of the same, eternal conversation. What

have you been wounded by, and does it still smart?

It’s never quite winter without

a fear of a first apex.

Flowers may endure, but you press

together, like making new gardens.

Every growth is a culture; of

course your wound stings. By tomorrow there will

be a thought of an empty house, but not

how you would think. Minky flowers live, soon.

 

Angle at Angel (Best)

Syncopations adumbrate here—

piquancy of immediate presses downward,

as if wanting labor’s anomaly

to perch at a lackluster center.

But wait. There used to be feathers where

time finds an ill (as if to say shrill)

shirked again, criminal body.

A criminal body is an X of spades,

and a best part about it is that it’s no criminal, really.

Awake into metaphor,

before it’s too late to travel past obvious

platitudes, geography of tension.

You awake past a dawn, but only past it for a time:

are there feathers again? Does anybody want them?

On an opposite side of graven,

something’s given, and it’s not a platitude once seen.

But it’s not an instrument, and it’s not a new knife.

Where once was a syncopation now

there is a set of plausible connections, too

unlike anything before to be counted.

 

William C. Avedon

An Anthropology of the Neuron

Distended, time gets in in fragments:

andante swerves to meet fortissimo,

better part of Psyche left

to wonder where a giant left his shoes—

in whose castle did you own yourself?

she asks, tenuously, not yet having

            embraced feminism.

It was always amniotic

            becomes

a way of saying that grief awaits,

a little bit of space

from which to begin to reinvent noise.

You take a positive and infuse it

with enough salt to make comeliness seem like mellow,

            light mellow,

an atmosphere

below cloud cover but not emptied

of its indelibility. Did you say truth?

You raise an Other,

take out a card

from a last pack,

lay it down on a table and count to the end of finitude.

            Someone says you’re a copy,

but without a spark, how would life speak?

Pounce

Delightfully sinful, as ever,

a word goes out into past-future-

speaking as if to shore up remaining time,

weight holding to phonemes—

can you buy another block of terrace for my terrace?

Or will you follow?

(You’re always smooth.)

Plausibility mistakes

an interim for

another side of a disaster,

but kissing is always nice,

fucking is better,

Bible far away.

You could pretend that

words don’t matter,

but they’ll haunt your chicken ears after you’ve spoken.

No need to promise:

a flag is down.

You’re always smooth because wanted,

a set of gesticular crimes,

and after that, coolness fades into

a new sort of emptiness here.

Spring is not a windstorm, and weather soon fades

but no one needs to play Spiderwoman or

pretend that what’s caught in layers won’t thin out.

You bring a new pillow

for a road, for each road is a journey

as has been said and is not entirely

repetitive (unless it is).

A new sort of actual:

portend day back into wanting,

waiting, maybe, for

a chance at nakedness with another

(entirely spirit)—

write a new caption in

if you dare to tell a story

of happiness and unfulfilled longing.

(A century’s a cliché.)

            After singing, happen

            to happen to one, again:

            don’t let this world flummox

            what’s left of your better part.

            you can breathe

            you can become

as if saying a knife

is a euphemism for cutting lace

which you might have from time to time. You say

bodies

are broken

by their

edging

and you believe, but only because you 

felt poetry’s time here,

and was only broken by a first cut

continuing in silver crush

adumbrated by all markets

recognizing purely itself

(themselves) as if held up high

elucidating atoms

strings of your discontent

strength of your maelstrom

ribs rubbed for extra verve

In a hollow, this world is always the same

(dear poetry: fuck off, or else take to the brighter plane)

(you’ll call again)

String theory of your discontent, satin

plaited up around tussles 

makes for a holiday

but not for long: until

there is light in all places, a C

will remain content to be and let be, again

as if saying that industry matters

for a few, until you get it back, here

where moon is full

A C content to be is

subject to a knife of industry, once more

because there was light

that needed to be tamed by you

needed to be tamed by you and others

and in an intransigent form (of light brigade)

people abandon meat for starfruit

reach into them

            for a slice        of kiwi             or orange

            sun of a neck’s a throat

            waiting                        to tell               its story

            outside helium

            of signs in which it was born

            (but never eschew a clearing)

            you wait for    a new tree        to hang in

            outside a visible sphere

            like becoming blank               on land

like becoming narrative, for

a disaster awaits (for pouncing)

a panther is not afraid

a lamb lies down with a lion’s end

Lion again, and he does not know what

he saw before he had been made she

a knife awaits late arousal

(you swim with animals beside)

You wait for

A lion waits for a lamb to return

Industry, temporary

Industry, dispensation

You wait by a mountain for

you to sing

(No one comes to a fire escape)

(The birds are at their highest)

No one thinks to thwart

birds and bring you back to earth

this world keeps getting dark

Ideal is still an image

You write recognition in salt

You approach a field altogether

(one man leaves off, to leave you)

Ideal is still an image in afterlife

where knives first got grounded

You used to own a knife long ago

You used it to cut a neck

You cut a neck from a sun

You were a devil’s glass

returning to earth

You owned a knife from stations

It was borrowed by yourself

You cut into water

and now you love water

but you’re no lake

You are a ruffled surface

melting into grains of sand

(Are these grains of God?)

(All these bees rush in

but a Cartesian move awaits.)

Filigree is

a greater proportion, of knives.

Your greatest undoing, here.

(That you bought a knife.)

(As if you’re waiting to pounce,

you hold a door here.

You wait for nothing.

Sky removes sky.

A is not equal to A.

There never were trees.)

Tell

who you love the best:

was it a curve to an apple that once held you there?

(You have only questions:

How does a dog

elope with God of questioning,

and how does a questioner

become sincere

in a dome of questions?)

So perhaps this is two, then,

subtle changes of a future

becoming no one’s

answer to a new obsolete,

as if held in a futurespeak.

What a clock might say:

remove an H from the skin of your body

and if something still remains of you

you know you’ve done things right,

but not off to the right

or off to the left, then—

you have to hold on to those that you love

without a pounce of an infinitive

(You ease into a split

infinitive for now)

and don’t be afraid to try

Love of consolation is

not a consolation prize, or

an edge of a bird

and love of consolation is a verb

made manifest by pure nouning

of a book

There’s none

who can say

what’s in it

Love of a good book

is what will keep you poor,

but don’t let this keep you from loving those you love

(You could make a music into an absolute dream)

(Poor lover)

(And each night as music fades into salt

there is an awaiting, for

this world’s almost as soft as lace)

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