Monday, June 06, 2011

A manifesto on the poetics of C.

for her birthday,
Oh beauty who fell asleep
on your birthday,

we swipe at you.
-- Rae Armantrout

1.

lived, a day

wrapped in absence of air,
we stopped to offer, twigs

and light,
wet pools of paper,

soft vehicles of travel,

some say the tributaries reach,
reach up,

a taste for mindfulness
and edge,


2.

what any bird
would trust,

a shining resource

some things are brutal,
incomplete,

are hard to speaking,
speak,

length,
a force of nature,


3.

an orchid bears one flower,
bears,

an earthly house,

words: a hard taste,
tempted,

mind the dedication,

slipped, a slip in,
hidden,


4.

the pace of silence,
slowed to crawl,

could singe
and shrivel,

a portrait made
is not what’s kept

parted, drawn

a laundry, white room
, curly hair

brush: relentless

, counting strokes


5.

layering, a tendril
, tidepool

deepest blue,


6.

a bell, rings

long, and
often questioned,

in full view,

your technicalities
wrote out sentences,

corrected buttonholes,

the leathery strap,

a carcass heavy
as a book,


7.

twinned, partitioned,
morning-wide,

relatively small,
and singled,

Pims, held point,

cotton shirts,
and finished,

estimations flutter,

natural,
a paper cup,


8.

, the city well
has run dry,

sparked
from metaphor,

portrait of
your dinner,

flared, a tempo,

not a statement,
definition,


9.

past lives
so frequently recalled,

present a field,

proposal of
cupcakes,

curiously dismissed,

the sake of argument,

like one
silk stocking,

, present


10.

who are you
, really

littered resemblance,
an emblem of

your swooning door,
another birthday,

emotional worlds,
the trickery of logic,

let who you are
, come

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