Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Poems written in response to Max Ernst’s 1934 surrealistic novel in collage.
—It’s a grim age for pilgrimage. The waters of ablution bloom with blue-green algae. But even the fastest Baptist would find this torrent abhorrent.
—Oh don’t be shellfish and mussel your way into the shoals! It’s simply unseemly. Surely the river doesn’t need another drowned voice.
—But the water is getting away; it must be stopped! This canyon would be so much more accommodating if it harbored a peaceful lake. The spirit could find herself there, in those still waters, gazing back.
my inverse the tree
dresses for a different
more delectable sun
its gender is dioecious
its sexual partners are six-
legged and winged
its holes hold birds’ eggs for the snake
smooth and warm as coins
disappearing into
that snakeskin purse
what can it have to teach
it stays naked all winter
superficiality proliferates
blank and green
the light transfigured
into moving shadows
and thinner than a wire-worm
the first filament of rot creeps in
Demain est une moignon livide
—Joyce Mansour
some worthy victim must
be offered up
to mollify the mob
throbbing in concert
private lusts subsumed
in collective outrage
like rivulets joining forces
to flood to drown to crush
the rush is contagious
and feeds on acts of violence
a carnivorous carnival
an unamusement park
with tin-pot gods set out
to catch the blood
a flood doesn’t come
from the sky alone
it starts as white fungus
bubbling from a stump
a snail out at noon
grazing on lemon-scented horsebalm
and red efts wandering the moss
like dragons errant
the ground is saturated
it oozes fluid wherever i step
and the creek is high
and slurs its words
but a flood doesn’t come
from the earth alone
it starts as a shimmer of mizzle
a slow blur of rain
the farther hills vanish
the closer hills disguise themselves as clouds
when night falls we can drift off
on the white noise of rain
if the flood doesn’t come here
if the storm changes course
in the united states of amnesia
any disaster lasts just 20 minutes
i pull my hat down
and hurry home
she dreams an ocean
in the key of D minor
with a heartbeat
she dreams ah
in the lap of waves
the tug of currents and destinies
she dreams her ladyship
and a sea bed spreads its sails
and becomes a reef
her dreams turn pelagic
their strange cries riding the wind
on hollow bones
she dreams a ship so vast
its passengers hardly realize
we’re all at sea
I thought I was in a forest but there were no birds and no trees, only the long shadows of the bars in my cage. I walk for miles without leaving my cell: the cellphone in my pocket makes sure of that. Beyond the visible bars are the stronger, invisible ones, guarded by angels and demons. But any noise a voice box can make is no match for the average syrinx, whether of a wood thrush or a bittern: the dinosaurs that escaped extinction have a laugh for every cry and a cry for every laugh. It was they who guided us when it mattered, not that supple bride the soul. They whose annual return from another world made us leave room for the miraculous.
I thought I was in a forest again but it was only people with their fists in the air. They swayed in a wind that didn’t speak English and fell in a rain of bombs. I plant myself in a likely sidewalk crack and dedicate the rest of my life to wordless prayer.
All winter in your garden the tea rose went on blooming even with the sun so cold and distant. I didn’t realize I was on a pilgrimage until I arrived, still dripping and possibly drowned from crossing the river/channel/sea. You slept like an officiant, giving yourself up to dreams you knew you’d forget the moment you awoke. From time to time your mouthparts moved as if in speech. I eventually relocated to the garden and became its folly. When the sun appeared, I tried to trace my shadow’s outline on the flagstones with chalk, but it wouldn’t stay still. This is what it means to live on nothing.
Reclining on a pincushion, your needle eyes tethered to their fine threads of dream, how extravagant were you, my siren! A movable feast of wreckage brought the best jetsam, ship bellies opening on the reef, releasing their cargo into the current. Yet we fish in your waters still, drawn by the roar and hiss of surf, applicants for permanent residence in the flow state. Our ships carry factories; our nets are vast and drag weights that brutalize the unseen depths. Our earplugs are made of old age and apostasy. I sing sometimes in the shower, under my breath.
Meet me in the soggy bottom of the alphabet, among the leftover Zs. The curtain has come down on our last big scene like a deluge. I am ready to marry a bear just to gain access to a dry den, feast on truffles, whortleberries, and the succulent larvae of wasps. In a mushroom of one’s own, one’s entire fruiting body can be swaddled in a veil. One can conjure a tin soldier from a poisoned cup.
down the drain says the shapeshifter
you can hear the call of the wild
life in the sewers and boardrooms
but the witch doctor is no octopus
his head cannot thread a needle
his craft is no match for running water
down the drain or into the gutter
with your mutter of all bums
says the shapeshifter’s body language
her people knead her
to be better bread
rising like a mushroom cloud
while the witch doctor’s salt
returns to the dead sea
fed by a river neither deep nor wide