Selections from "The Bright, the Heavy"—a series from the forthcoming collection The Monster Lives of Boys & Girls
ONE DAY, THIS happens: My head is full of snow. Quiet is on my head. The ice-man keeps hitting me over the head with an ice-bar hard as ice; I fall down; I get up; the ice-man hits me on the head again. I see this happen: It happens again. I get up again, the in- explicable will. Silence is on my head he breaks it in the lung-hunt (air); tympan-crack under the shock of air-mass sonore; he unties the insides of my ear toward the clean sound, the loud sound the cotton then and iron sound in snow; at the indicating post, arrowing the good hypothesis: Don’t try to make me know the soul- envelope over the grid of language: a microscopic futility. Here: silence is on my head it’s growing in my head I dreamed it there bigger in the ice-sphere he breaks it Come break it What can guarantee me from the coldÃLAST NIGHT I ATE A HUMAN in a dream––or at least its bones––I thought that fingers might split over the touch of human skin That day on the subway we heard the buzzing of the mechanic’s wing like ice cubes rattling against each other–– Tuesday: snow in the grates Torn into the quick, it’s small things that become difficult, buying apples not pears, placing the fingers inside the holes–– Now I am this living instrument of a heart, two hands, etc., given loose to animal luminosity & fabulous humors. These, too, do grow out of (me) (a) the (very) body of all surprise––ÃI SAID to them then in their sleeps Your sheets have wandered off. Let them, he said, let them.ÃTHIS spectacle: the movie-house universe moving. Hold still.––to touch this you with a twelve- fingered attention, concentrated on the flesh, made by the laws of science Out of an eye I made a long tear a diamond-string system of color––, & in the evening out in space you see sixteen sunsets come & go in one day from brilliant red to deepest blue––& the lights “over the pole-bathing seas”–– Settle down now, bring them (here) near a center, an axis, for what ration of relief in the world (to be found) (inside) (“a body”) “the exact point[s] I inhabit” (“on earth”)ÃFROM THE FROTHIEST RIVERS on the rockiest globe, escutcheon me with a signing coat far east of us, my insignias’ arms is missing something in the night-restaurant I swallow the pit’s full-middle from an endometrium dark I did could build a new grill a new grrr new girrlÃIn this ejecta process, known visitors from other planets are a small fraction of alien troves lying undiscovered here on Earth, mainly mistaken for rocks. HERE IS THE MAN WHO GOT HIS GOLD eye put out (7 x 4 foot frame)––What was he doing so close to the ground? Now he’s a dark, with wrinkles and crow’s feet his eye was a rock in the system [sissies] that relegated animals to childhood, and put brakes at the bottom of the beast Like him, they have risen so that they no longer exist on earth What do they do with the missing parts? [[(Cars, or all that is left of the picture is two big toes)]] Thinking with things as they exist (ruins) the mind tries to rebuild (de-composed) feet. There were days when objects came to me easily (a coat, a tire) Knowing or not the value of matter, it’s easy to lose three inches in a lifetime (bits of moon blasted loose at dawn) skewed by the tug of other planets, I might form a ring that rotates near Jupiter (shed skin) a piece of debris from Venus moves to fall to Earth, bits of life push between borders––kiss kiss this Parthenon dust It doesn’t take that much walking to make a path through the grass but the dandelion is poisonous Now they grow artichokes on top of the church for the melting lamb, the snow-or-sun-daughter they eat in April, it’s what the crowned heart told about the “candleblows” of sunlight–– I saw the columns from the bathroom window–– that stone even my hands could smash As the meat was created to hang on the hours of earth at the backside of the peacock, where the eyes are spread is the original anti-matter, the Achilles heel so according to the inscription on the votive thighs, Love is of antediluvian, has tender feet, steps on the heads of men Love, what is Love love of We are currently standing in North (Somewhere in the Western Ocean we will live for love) (Love, come) (within) (the long range) (of age) carrying a scratch back from the Acropolis with a gesture of epiphany toward the right hand Like the man who forgot then re-learned his language word-by-word. Each day, in his language I learn a new word A new word comes back to me–– ìßäåí (zero), êïõêÜëé (spoon)ÃCUTTING UP its contents, this apartment is a scene obtained from tapering blanket-pieces when stripped & hoisted First comes white-horse Then the receptacle piece honed from 1,000 nameless emergencies woven within the hour By the ordinary laws of anatomy, I, too, was given a heart. They could have hidden something in there, in the beginning, without us knowing: A bottle cap, a bit of plastic. Such as the oyster, I’ll get over it. And when they opened the chest each night sets fire to its own ear eye throat, heartÃ(THE MACHINE OF BEING, OR, DRAWING TO BE LOOKED AT ASKEW) One day, tired of heeling the path abrupt I will stop and melt the nerves of thought in my hard head, sieved in the magic pavement. The flying fishes of this brainy instrument are accorded as pearled notes are cramping across the atmosphere’s elastic bands. What have my friends given me? What have I given them? Stranded in the blood or the book––impossible globes & strapped an impassible task I imitate stars. What have I dreamed of the most grandiose?
Featured Poet, Page 1 - Eleni Sikelianos
I - Trinkets in a Closed Drawer
II - A Wrinkle in the Trees
III - Becoming a Fish
IV - Closer to the Cosmos
Afterword - A Poem by Nell Maiden
Contributors
Current Issue - Summer 2003
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