No Name
Atlantic, Iowa
Bird Syntax
Dear Thano
New Hopes†
Bric-a-Brac
Doorbell Press
Contact
Outside the theater a stranger tells me about a Brand New shoe-shine. Outside the window, the trees are turning to fish spines. Outside, the trees have grown the world a ceiling. Outside is inside, sings the open window. After walking a mile in your shoes (she said) should I leave them outside. “The mud room” (I said).
*
The Great Outdoors! Or just outside it. At dusk the insects swarm the lamp like the stars swarm like insects once I put the light out.
*
In the yard the sun dries me like a hide as you gather your little summer-somethings and the world spins the house unwrapped. Modern Home No. 25, page 12. We used to be a dream about fish patterns (I said) “but now it is all grackle and cordwood,” there is nothing else in the world! “Dinner can be whenever we want it” (she said). Oh. And then, cornbread.
*
Ground-up. Ground-down. The air is a hot glass bottle and the shore is glittered with fish scales. Grammar School Entertainm’t: Ground meat, Gourd. Gerund. Jewel. Germ. We coat ourselves in mud and sit in the lake up to our necks: cypress knee and spatterdock. Jesus. Jordan. Jiraffe. ...Jeronimo! (I said), jumping in.
*
You were in the shower (I said), and I was alone. I was alone and you were in the shower. The shower sounds like rain, sounds like it is raining in the shower.
*
“ANOTHER BIG SALE!” (I said). Outside the store we stop to watch two sparrows torture a wet cicada in the gutter. Incredible (she said), “which means too big, in an old-fashioned way.” I respond but even I am not listening to me: I am imagining all the advertisements I will never get to see.
*
Mr. Geo. H. Bender. Nell, Sue, and Corina. Windshields, headlights and windowglass. Judge Briar. PRESIDENT CARTER. S. Andrews and A.F. McKensie. W.C. Newbry of the firm of Newbry & Harding. Rice. Agent Orange. Jas. Churchman, Esq. Wm. S. McRoberts, stg. agt. Yellow and white steer, black and white steer. Peter Toy. Helen Troy. The man who was just arrested in Omaha. New York and New Orleans via Panama. Six-weeks-old pigs. W. Sprowls, an old Union soldier who died in Charlotte, N.C. CEO of Intel. John Cale, treasurer. Childbed linen, childrens robes, jams, frocks, vests and tunics, gentlemens shirts, stocks, gloves. The Metallurgical Society of America. Mitsubishi. Mrs. L. C. Eisenhart. President Just Elected. Vladmiar Lenin. The Germans. These are the men to whom to write (she said).
*
“Close your eyes” (she said) and imagine me writing. I have two pencils, one in each hand. I start in the middle and write in opposite directions; one sentence becomes one sentence, the other becomes another. “Are your eyes closed” (she said).
*
Doctor’s Office. Where have I seen you before the Dr. asks.
*
Things that have happened in my sleep: I drink water from the bedside table and the glass makes a kaleidoscope around my eyes. The radiator ticks like a clock. The bed is a billiards table and it is your turn to break. The bed is a game of pool and I scratch (the dog). I dream the dog has shelved herself among the books and I have to withdraw her at the checkout desk. Glass shavings (snowflakes) fall from the moon (streetlamp) into the alley. Prisoners stack sandbags in town. You wake me to close the window because the opening is hurting the wall: “it’s just not nice.” The clock ticks like a radiator. I’m sure there are more.
*
Snowplows crawl the streets like enchanted termites, men lilt home with lacquered barcounter beneath their fingernails. This evening M----. cuts the wick of the lamp into a forked-tongue: “see, see” (she said) at the shadows, “Satan is real!” We have all noticed how stormclouds tend to gather over the new cineplex.
*
Nebraska, your seed, there is something else I have been meaning to ask you. “How is My Driving?” (I said).
*
[Sign: Quiet Please].
*
Crickets, robins, tree-stumps that look like dogs. Behind the old-man’s fence: dogs that look like tree-stumps. “Husband Road” (she said), I had been waiting.
*
In wintertime it is winter-time; spring is a wet cave dripping with stalactites and the dog hunts new light through the house: morning rhombus, evening triangle. I was locked in the pantry (she said). “The pantry has no door” (I said). The tulips explode.