Sunday, November 17, 2013

Two Poems (Jesse Glass)

[cup a black sphere to your breast]

Dear, you lift
Yr. face to me
One antique penny stuck to yr. thigh
You would get up to seek
News of another day
But my kiss nails yr. wings
Across the intricate door
& the bull roars, delighted
At the sudden stroke of the sword,
The mallet blows that drive it deeper.

Blood turns to smoking
Wheat & the Great Scorpion
Feints the star in its tail
At the mirrored Mountebank
Juggling dark matter beyond

This small cold room
That smells like yr. mouth.

Death is what lies
Twisted within the abandoned, eastern hive.
Armored with brains
& wombs
It sallies forth
From the burning horizon
To build a sugared palace in the wilderness.

Now cup a black sphere to yr. breast
For human comfort—

For Love becomes at last
A dried gourd struck against a wrist,
A rattle of dry seeds
In autumn weather—and less:
A scrawl of ink across
A penny’s worth of parchment

Ripe for a jostle among the flames.


Dog

Dog leapt up & grabbed my arm
It was an upright dog.
Dog, Dog, I said.  His fine
grey teeth inscribed
my bone.  We, together, waltzed
four footprints in the quickly purpling snow,
& the chain freed from the Keeper’s loop
hizzed behind us like a comet’s tail.

Jaws relaxed & snapped
for grip; a sea
wept through my fingers.
We swayed our marriage motion
for the crowd; then ploughed
5 wounds upon the wind:
Pain, I postulated, & the Dog
howled after.  Memory & Fear!  Then Strength
of the monumental hand slammed down
upon the muzzle of this Shuck
That paces out the cube of all I am.  The Dog
meat thrilled: I drilled his Then
With one last dialectic, Death.
He rolled upon the winter street,
His motion broken, argument
complete.


Please follow the resurrection of Jesse Glass's Ahadada Books on the press's Facebook page; see Ahadada Books archives at the University of Maryland. The press's journal, Ekleksographia, is very much alive and kicking. Here, an interview with Jesse Glass, at Specs, and a video of his performance of it. Of his many books, here is Judith Skillman's review of The Passion of Phineas Gage & Selected Poems, at the Golden Handcuffs Review. You can find free PDF's of many of his books on his Wikipedia page (link below).

No comments:

Post a Comment