Poetry
from Soft Apocalypse
ONLY IN MY NIGHTS DID THE WORLD SLOWLY REVOLVE.
Halogen drop in the spokes. I reached through and, on one side, a hard
tiredness overtook me, on the other, the moon shouldered off its clouds, took
what it was offered. A job as an understudy, a flower from the hardware store,
a nickel for example is easy. I am also other than what I imagine myself to be…. A
diorama of the room affords only a second-hand sofa, a proposal (juked), a
view of all those happy girls pressed up against the walls in the violeted light.
I’m yours, too, Anonymously—MINOR EVENTS 1
between atoms the implausible cosmonaut
in her heart-shaped sunglasses
in her slick ruby suit
turns herself slowly into
the chlorinated bluebelonging to the public pool
as if every event
announces strange beloveds
nearly naked swimmers
avoid her slipstream—they point to the shimmering belly
as it turns up
it wants to be licked
the sun does itthe radio static
the slice of a skateboard
behind the fence—in the beginning there was
the navel
a striated color
something rising between
her legs—
the trajectory became
elliptical—in the movies
people are lonely and kissing
their worlds together
in the next scene
one girl rotates under
another girl
saying yes
like or unlike thisabsurd person
a minor event
in the water
here is the angel
wants to drag her underON A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, KILOMETERS AND KILOMETERS BELOW
WHAT HAD BEEN A GREAT CITY, we go on our knees to the church of the
neon cross, watch supplicants race the strip, no muffler, smoke tearing through
our nostrils, pink Jesus blinking mutely overhead in a final effort to turn our eyes
up from the buckled pavement—at what price? you’re still the person I wanted to tell
about the changes I’ve been making. we trade between our emptied hands. we look
again at the disaster, we mark each other, semantic insecurity, at what point does a
person become sad and solitary? is a question Lispector never answered after a long
drag on her cigarette.
in the soft underside of the ashen city, I dream we’ve written the end of the movie.
I wake up and find we’ve written only how do I get out of this production machine.
THIS WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT AT THE CORNER STORE
and summer was a slow idea barely
coming around sleepless someone
had called an ambulance
causing a sorrow to appear
on the pavement
a stubborn flower ragged
a silk breath asking
any animal
preferably a tiger to appear
to slip down the cold aisles
to eat all of this
crinkled up everythingis contemporary of the present
blue lights sweeping our hair
back off our foreheads I wish it were
a decade ago
an old boyfriend could be
running across a street careless
in his pin-striped valet vest stealing throughthe shined cars the traffic my heart nearly
stopped in the air horses
not what I wanted
phantasmic colors stepping across
the tops of the buildings easily
watercolor horses changing
the lights a mirror a conveyer belt
a little wet pushing a cold sodame shuffling along someone else
scanning up and down for what
all this time alone sleepless might
be worth anyway someoneis slamming tender on the counter
is calling an ambulance
we don’t think we are prepared
for death and by strangers like this
arms full of paper bags
I fell back into unbalanced
a little embarrassed it’s okay really it’s
okay—WHICH IS A SURREPTITIOUS LINE—between two notes of music? there
are streetlights, night repairs, there is a little soup, a subrational argument, a
discarded silhouette. on side B, someone is raising the rent. black car cruising
the windows on the other side of the street where I also am, almost turning
inside of that crushed velvet dress—Happy Christmas, you texted. quick heavy
snow punching a hole in the sky I’ll sew up later tonight with old sequins.
down at the American Legion, Angel slides a bright green shot down the
bar—honey, don’t you know by now? you can play a shoestring so long as you’re sincere.I WAS GATHERING RAW MATERIAL, I was seeking an expanse, we were
living yet at angles to ourselves, blinking on an off, reversing inside, painting
the yellow lines, the factory floor, the road narrowing, I thought of the space
between my legs, gradients, the fervid rooms, vectors, a rover powering down,
the nearness of my mind to a bird climbing high and alone in the clear
air—THIS IS A TEST. the morning blares its lament over the shifting streets,
foreclosures, busted-up tennis courts I might have used in childhood to
practice my crossover. a future came fast. faster, through the intestines, heart,
liver, cellular transfer, chemical tentacles in the water, a hiccup in the brain. at
point zero every element becomes a startling thing. a wreck becomes an opening, a
slick young porpoise washes up to the sandy edge.DREAM OF RISKED PHRASES IN SPACE
failing spectacularly at orderliness the primroses
rush hour yellowness
a soft geometry unfinishing
the edges the sentence
giving in to its most
we could say phosphenicsense pressure tiny implosions
even in suppose a vacant lot
under terrible conditions the blooms
how they fall together
and fall apart easily
making a damp room
in my ear
the whirr of the fan against
the window against whichin late June we leaned
passing mute fireworks
between us—clinical slingshots
wheeling in the sky—
and heat lighting too
making brief incredible shapes
our handsnot keeping time keeping alternately
the oscilloscope pressed to the roof
of our mouths
their pink apprehensions
unmaking us making us
so possible I believe our lingering
here over and over
rubbing against somehow
what cold and sugarless happensTHINGS HAD GONE BACK TO BEING WHAT THEY WERE. a
couple rocking across the television, the scratch of the needle on a worn-out
record—if I were trying to get to Tuskegee, what exit would I take? another accident
flagged on the shoulder, a line of cool-eyed Madonnas at the roadside
market, had I left a little lipstick on the pillow, we had left a surgical silence,
a tear in the vertical. —warm me upinstead with your guesses, dumb suggestions, the truth loops itself out of eyeshot
a million miles below the interstate. the years. go and go—before I could say
what was real and what had gone galloping through my dreams...I did get to
where I was going next, I stood on a roof half-dressed watching a jet wake
stretch itself into the most insane blue you’ll ever in sunlight see.