i.
the icelandic word
gluggaveður
loosely translates to
“window weather”
and how fitting
for that day
in early april
ii.
when a sinister shape
took my window, all
rook and malice,
primordial sound-terror
echolalia caw, caw, aw
and perched on the
plateau of my garage —
iii.
•scanning, scanning•
buttonblack were his eyes,
obsidian
and carrioncrazed!
the raven slid his talons
pianist-like across the shingles
The drive home is a rabies shot, agitated,
you twitch from state line to county line
to places in between,
the coordinates slipstream daydreams —
You remember the road numbers:
145th, 194th
impossibly lengthy, made of pulverized
bonemeal and crunch coat,
those steel-cut graveled byways
You remember the inhabitants
rendered from bacon fat and ham hock
tourniquets and night shift salt licks
Or those pubertied boys and their
percussion kits behind the old band shell,
blasting canonfire flams back there
on Thursday nights, before the
sweating, stinking performance
of pops classics, patriotica,
the flags swatting the air,
or was that the yellowed sheet
music, free from clothespin
bondage?
outside the world is screaming
for water. Life is bursting—flowers climactic, orgasm-
ic things, their petals dripping, gooey with plant blood.
the air is holding a cloth to my face
covered in atmosphere
it’s the end of all things,
the birth of all things.
my feet kick stones that are wetter than the grass,
slick with memory of forgotten riverbeds.
i have known the sorrow of these friends,
the gnawing behind the eyes that can’t be diagnosed.
i’m being torn in half like a split pine log
drowning sap, spineless lifeform.
high heat is labor incarnate.
the door opens and out I spill
afterbirth born from eyesockets torn,
rendered unconscious by warmth.
the end of all
the birth of all
picked apart by the vultures at dawn
the yardsale ladies size me up
with their price-guns and brooched breasts
the spine is a horrible thing to waste.
brave little toaster cries crumbs &
sidewalk lines like calendar kisses *&*
my brain is an intestine that can solve math problems.
end all
birth of
Image credit: https://flic.kr/p/TcpJMW (licensed under Public Domain)
Rice Paper 