The Reading of
She sat, sitting, with her legs tucked into the hove of her shirts, corduroy, camel’s skin, some unidentifiable cotton serge, bought, most likely, at Zellers or Miracle Mart. A bevel, an edginess, that demanded attention. An anticipation that the Torah might be read, deconstructed, transubstantiated, retextualized, then signed by the messianic hand of reason. Acumen, perspicuity, an oblique anxiety, tome-mercantilism, sullying the horsehair cushion cushioning the cumber in the hollow bone-work of the buttocks. A coffee-tableau, architectonics, macramé, savant stitching and quiltwork. Waiting for the soothsayer to proffer a polite answer to question: question and answer, interpersonal depersonalization. Something’s should not be deconstruction, the mouth, the ear, the flocculent awl of the labrum. Best to leave some things as they are, or are wont to be are.
We, all of us, learned to make paper from scratch, with wet papyrus and cork-reed, and an offset-press that smoothed the paper to a fine sheet of writer’s mead. Not balled-up newsprint bartered and haggled for behind the Cantors, or in the back alleyway of the Steinberg’s, where one can purchase, at wholesale, bagel-thins and pumpernickel melbas. The creamery cheese, of course, is retail. We, all of us, saw the poster in the front window of the Cantor’s Bakery proclaiming, ‘You don’t have to be orthodox to eat bagels’, which to us, and perhaps we alone, meant Winnebegos. Seldom do I read what is fashionable, first person’s written in a schoolgirl’s vernacular, all that pubescent angst, caponized cocks, nervous ticking, youthful travelogues. I’d rather be interned, mortared, in Dante’s hell, eyes frozen wide open, Dis picking at my oculus’, than read about what you did, or didn’t do, on your summer vacation in Greece, or hell, for that matter.
Of Tongue
tongue (clacking)
cheek clacking
(tongue)
cheek (clacking)
tongue clacking
(cheek)
and tongue cheek and spit and clack of tongue
against roof clacking spit tongue and cheek
tongue of bone and of spit and of chalk (clacking)
She sat, sitting, with her legs tucked into the hove of her shirts, corduroy, camel’s skin, some unidentifiable cotton serge, bought, most likely, at Zellers or Miracle Mart. A bevel, an edginess, that demanded attention. An anticipation that the Torah might be read, deconstructed, transubstantiated, retextualized, then signed by the messianic hand of reason. Acumen, perspicuity, an oblique anxiety, tome-mercantilism, sullying the horsehair cushion cushioning the cumber in the hollow bone-work of the buttocks. A coffee-tableau, architectonics, macramé, savant stitching and quiltwork. Waiting for the soothsayer to proffer a polite answer to question: question and answer, interpersonal depersonalization. Something’s should not be deconstruction, the mouth, the ear, the flocculent awl of the labrum. Best to leave some things as they are, or are wont to be are.
We, all of us, learned to make paper from scratch, with wet papyrus and cork-reed, and an offset-press that smoothed the paper to a fine sheet of writer’s mead. Not balled-up newsprint bartered and haggled for behind the Cantors, or in the back alleyway of the Steinberg’s, where one can purchase, at wholesale, bagel-thins and pumpernickel melbas. The creamery cheese, of course, is retail. We, all of us, saw the poster in the front window of the Cantor’s Bakery proclaiming, ‘You don’t have to be orthodox to eat bagels’, which to us, and perhaps we alone, meant Winnebegos. Seldom do I read what is fashionable, first person’s written in a schoolgirl’s vernacular, all that pubescent angst, caponized cocks, nervous ticking, youthful travelogues. I’d rather be interned, mortared, in Dante’s hell, eyes frozen wide open, Dis picking at my oculus’, than read about what you did, or didn’t do, on your summer vacation in Greece, or hell, for that matter.
Of Tongue
tongue (clacking)
cheek clacking
(tongue)
cheek (clacking)
tongue clacking
(cheek)
and tongue cheek and spit and clack of tongue
against roof clacking spit tongue and cheek
tongue of bone and of spit and of chalk (clacking)
Red Currants
there is a carnival, where mischievous children
dance like Cossacks, under streamers of red currants
sticky apples, caramel balls, cornhusks and scarecrows
a moon splintered, assenting to nothing, defending nothing
signifying nothing, but perhaps, sticky apples, and
caramel balls, scarecrows cawing, streamers red as currents
when mischievous children, dancing like Cossacks, pull at the
moon, splintered and assenting to nothing, defenseless
kicking the light, like Cassocks, mouths sticky and sneering
forcing the light, refracted in rounded cheeks, sneering
to cast its bitter shadow, onto streamers of red currants
where there is a carnival, assenting to a playfulness, where
little devils, dancing like Cossacks, scare scarecrows, cawing
kicking the splinters of light, screaming, from a jealous moon
there is a carnival, where mischievous children
dance like Cossacks, under streamers of red currants
sticky apples, caramel balls, cornhusks and scarecrows
a moon splintered, assenting to nothing, defending nothing
signifying nothing, but perhaps, sticky apples, and
caramel balls, scarecrows cawing, streamers red as currents
when mischievous children, dancing like Cossacks, pull at the
moon, splintered and assenting to nothing, defenseless
kicking the light, like Cassocks, mouths sticky and sneering
forcing the light, refracted in rounded cheeks, sneering
to cast its bitter shadow, onto streamers of red currants
where there is a carnival, assenting to a playfulness, where
little devils, dancing like Cossacks, scare scarecrows, cawing
kicking the splinters of light, screaming, from a jealous moon
The Flats behind Our House
I rode my bike on the flats
behind our house
my brother’s hair choused in the clip
of my spokes
Then Pisses
a dog yawps
then pisses down
the inseam of its leg
gods’ curs
preying on the sleepless
and wrought of mind
I rode my bike on the flats
behind our house
my brother’s hair choused in the clip
of my spokes
Then Pisses
a dog yawps
then pisses down
the inseam of its leg
gods’ curs
preying on the sleepless
and wrought of mind
A Very Short Poem
I am not a minstrel
nor a caster of doubt
just a simple philistine
God willing
I am not a minstrel
nor a caster of doubt
just a simple philistine
God willing
