i am reminded to please wait through the silence, to
check my work pants at the door, but it’s raining tiny
czarists over in delaware again & if i’m not mistaken
that pine tree pointing to the east like a cone-bearing
babe ruth has been moonlighting as an acre of corn
silk behind an amish high-rise. for twelve days i’ve
repeated a mantra in front of a volcano of junk mail
just for a flash of dick clark in his aboriginal form,
the bunkers of back hair under the eye of an amulet
that is our shared heritage as we flounder forth into
a conception of field. time zones herniate all along
the frontiers like an old man lugging around a trunk
stuffed w/sacks of dank rice—i am halfway through
the silence, i am waiting for the subway car scuttling
in the kernel of every syllable that remains unspoken
& the doors that slide open simply to reveal the sun.
a broken bat rib can be rendered only in alchemical
terms—you have to think through the sound—infer
the bloom out of the brownian motion of the ozone
& its correlation to the parchments tucked in a pair
of nylons discovered by a rotarian abob in great salt
lake. inside of every tone are a myriad of silences
& each one is waving a squeegee & a plastic bottle
of blue broth—i’m the one nearest the wall, i march
in lock-step to the accompaniment of the rhetorical
thwokk! of the russian gentry as they take a dry dive
from the skies, the roadways curdling w/the nesting
dolls that surfaced soon after their comet turned tail.
Originally Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.