—For A.K.
Break in with the I
and cut to the you
with all its invariable
slippage, new
like monsoon
mud smears on
pants legs.
There is you—
the you that
poem chats
with idly.
You breaking
new fragments.
Again, the I.
The utterance:
the car alarm
in the distance.
The image that
lingers too long
off the establishing
shot. Generic
like a paper cup.
Functionless like
a simile. You,
sound, You,
affectation,
You, body
without smell,
without the
heady perfume
of stale cigarettes
or the overstay
of cardamom
on the skin.
All too vast,
All too full
of fondness,
All. The I.
I breaks into
new vases,
shards collecting
in a heap
near the tracks
where the I
lived once,
where the I
diagramed
sentences
from German,
where the I
dreamed in
Esperanto.
Where the
I mourned
the hurried
rain and
tangled hair,
pragmatic
enough to be
sad and thaw
the raw meat
of the heart
just enough
to brown the
edges. There
all is sun,
bright light
where the you
sleep. Negation
of negation.
Lost of referent.
The I breaks,
rebuilds, installs
storm windows,
cracks next storm,
rebuilds again.
Learns to speak
the foreign tongue
of air. The I
breaks better.
Breaks with
beauty, grateful
for a chance
amongst the pot
shards. To be
re-kilned, kindled
and cooled
in night air.
To take the blank
invitation. To
start again.
I have never been much
for collections: I have
not been waiting to be
introduced to various
dead presidents etched
in nickel and tin. I have
my hands for counting,
although auspicious signs
and signifieds make for
strange arithmetic, which,
when acknowledged by
the local Rabbis, would
add up to nothing in
particular but prattle.
So my keepsakes keep
me in small boxes, no
tarnish, but rumbled
sepia tones and chemical
reactions. I cannot
shut the boxes, but
as the pieces fall away
the sinew of neurons
and duct tape reconstruct
the fragile Faberge
I hardly wish to keep.
Unless you engage
In the autumn saccharin
You’ll know that beauty
Rots your teeth
And resists
The completed
Verse enamel
So if you battled
Out your verse
Bloodied
Vulnerable
Most definitely
Alone and
Laughing
The last
Laugh
You’ll know
That the alphabet
Lied from the beginning
From the babble of
The primordial
Soup
We’ve always
Been Araidne
Alone and left
For gulls to
Pick apart
And yet
We need
To have
Something
Beautiful to
Whisper to
Drunken and
Near impotent
Lovers.
What moves away from the hard
to say—what lacks simple candor—
I sip unsweet tea amongst wreckage
Of a twister that has warped the dime
store rafters and drained the town.
Memory sieves the rubble.
What have we come to? Rhythm
to argument? A paperback apocalypse?
I pick a pine branch off the sidewalk.
The Baptist mission no longer has
windows. I look to you. If someone
from the moon looked down, they'd see
only the colored vista. We don’t talk:
You're not sure we can.
C. Derick Varn earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry at Georgia College and State University where he served as assistant editor for Arts and Letters: A Journal of Contemporary Arts. He also served as managing editor for the now defunct Milkwood Review. He won the Frankeye Davis Mayes/Academy of American Poets Prize in 2003, and has recently published poems in Backwards City Review, Cartier Street Review, JMWW Magazine, and Unlikely Stories 2.0. He currently lives Yongin-si, South Korea, during the academic year, and in Macon, Georgia, during the summer. During the day he works as a full-time instructor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ English Translation and Interpretation Department, and at night, he writes and paints.
BONUS FICTION: Faith Is Three Parts Formaldehyde...
ISSUE:
F A L L
2011
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