Dark on snow—hawks plate the wind
over a field in winter, empty now that
it’s written, a rhythm has begun in writing.
Sky troubling the toes, singing its songs,
to work with language and not mean. Elegy
are you a monologue, leggy, or conversant
in shadows? Suspect the word enough is not
enough. Come back to me, first encounter.
The curls are slacker or the time runs faster,
flashing coming away from the shingled
roof. There’s the tree, a woody quality
to forest words. The trace of a bird’s beak
on snow, embarrassing the bark. I’m stuck
on a dime, a moment in the stocking on
your leg, snaggled trellis, of peripheral glance.
I look around. I look around and around.
The mouse mounts a retreat. The ashtray
begs to differ from every other. I drop a little
mess of distracted matter. A comma forming
on the cat’s forehead; a comma hangs over us.
We are dying to know ourselves. When’ll the fake
fox enter the real life of underwater foxes.
A sock on the wrong foot. Tomorrow I
can pick up a piece of the pieces, the policeman
on the corner of my cloak of indivisibility.
The fly-shit on the windowpane might gleam
in the rays of divine winter hydrogen.
Communicating tragedy in parking tickets,
the policeman looks around—everything’s winter.
"The poet is of no party." BaudelaireOur manifesto is an act of substantiation.
We reject all forms of futilitarianism, in whatever disguise.
We believe that comedy is the song of the village and tragedy the song of the goat.
We believe what is written in the books, but now we want to see for ourselves.
The single idea, beating on the same doors in vain.
The analogue and the invention.
The death cell.
The first permission.
Though we watch the stage for things to happen, though our minds wander.
By ourselves in the green field, playing our diversion.
Though the story begins with the loss of a home.
Out of the machine, we shift restlessly in our seats.