windows do not wake
& the stars once our friends
are eating in
in the absence of trees
this temporary blind
w/even my breath
making more &
more demands
so tomorrow I’ll be moving
(we are moving) again
with very little in the way
of suggestions or light
yes a red blinking eye
w/guilt forcing its hand
& sleep making more sense
than is usual (sleep making
all the right moves)
the head seemingly
dismissed on the pillow
as is the marriage of night w/coincidence
where my memories disrobed
& we’re electing the marigolds
where we’re welcoming placards
or any distance we can put
between us & the darkness
as if bidding us go no
I mean it we have checked it
all out in advance
& I’m thinking (when wasn’t it
what) I was thinking...
now how did the world say it
turning slowly against me?
the mighty converged on the sale-seekers
those who tried adapting w/theme
rifling through trading cards
a mixer or the shoes
you could no longer fit in
so that must be the hand we were promised
pushing us off to where they
assure us more sun
when we’re finally convinced
of more movement
more of having it
checked out ahead of time
& how we’ll always be making
for this or that door
st camillus de lellis
all my life I tried
dieting—pills and gin, lip gloss,
till finally, dirt worked
st swithin
normally the air
is more rain than air & day’s
end is more morning…
st helier
may my marauders
see me in many a dream—
armed w/my own head
st alexis
grab all you’re able
bards and beggars, if from God’s
table it’s fallen
st theneva
file one more under
cliff-flung, life saved by a fish—
she gives up lungs twice
st justa & ruffina
the two of them thrown
atop the lions like potter’s
clay or a horned thing
st uncumber
she didn’t bare dad’s
demands (read—dearth of men, beards)—
dear’s unnamed at death
for W.C.W.
but free
chickens
u catch m
that is the thing:
how we’re
promised
to dust
them white
feathers & all
water enters my mouth
in place of the words
my tongue longed for
all has caught fire but the red chandelier
and the possessions I’d sealed in the pyramid
naked again I’ve returned to the heavens
surrounded by that light I’d forgotten—
so this is how it’s taken and how I let it be taken
sleep house like I remember you sleeping
once again I’m those whispers and that breeze you forbade
one cloud cloned & another long over due
an ode to this wintry aloud march’s lack of sound its lone charm
a congregation sinking like an ark rain-appraised & bled of the world saith the Lord
how the world
ever got hold
of this I can
only imagine
it’s no different
than what it is
a blue top-billed
& angelically dubbed
& a yellow that will kill
basal rosette of sticky leaves
either it’s something or nothing
either it’s budding or not
after calling back Arliss
& getting his machine
I returned to the sill again
drawing in some light
& some starling song
till all that I’d sighted & heard
seemed sky-billed or burnt
my backyard lacking for little
but his shit-eating grin
Mark DeCarteret’s work has appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Conduit, Cream City Review, The Del Sol Review, failbetter, Gargoyle, Hotel Amerika , Killing the Buddha, New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Poetry East, Pool, Quick Fiction, Salamander, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, Superstition Review, Tampa Review, and Third Coast as well as the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which I also co-edited. His fifth book, Flap, is due out with Finishing Line Press in May. Currently, Mark is the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Please check out his Postcard Project at pplp.org
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2011
THE NEW
RULES OF
W R I T I N G
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