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).

-- Jesse Glass