Anders

Poem about an angel
         Strolling down a street
                 Hearing each of the inner voices
                         That passes.

Like Stewart in "Rear Window" -
Crippled, he enjoys sitting
At the back window of his apartment
Watching all those aquariums of lives.

                         Honeycomb - we're feeding
                 At a nest of light, inside
         A cathedral - stained glass yellow
                         Of the goddess of grain
                         Streams off your face
                 You swim to me on water light . . . . .





"you must be in a very good
mood, everything is perfect" - white tree


*



Yes, White Tree,
Everything is perfect,
Both the heft of her hips
And her disregard for the colossally
Vulgar. It's as if she was sent

To rearrange
My estimates
Of myself. Here in Indiana, where the whole Saturday
Has been overcast except for a few brief glimpses -

You can trust her. She's
Real. It is impossible
To play hound dog upon this
Field.

                 She smiles a lot,
A cracked, stoned smile - like Kate Hudson, yeah,

         Kinda like that          buttercups

Lit up her chin when she smiled





Koi


So, the Koi fish may live to be 300 years old.
If I were a koi swimming in the same pond

for 300 years, I'd fight when death came.
The owners would think they were scooping

a bowling ball out of the water if they tried
to fish me out, I'd mess with them by flapping

my fins, waggling my fish tail and pretending
I still had air in my gills. When they finally

maneuvered me into the net, I'd pucker up
my fish lips and blow them bubble kisses.





Jenni in the grass


We met at a hotel outside of Austin. It was hot
truckblown dust swirling up from the highway.

her eyes blinked sharply blue
I felt emptiness in my stomach. She was too good


I spoke like real tentative . About bullshit metaphysics
then clutched inside . I need a drink I said


wandering back out where I had been sitting
before the deserted motel pool, on a lawn chair
reading Heraclitus.
She sat on the next chair over.
"Can I have a sip of that?" I handed her

my bottle of Old Crow. Ummmmm she said
she arched her throat back a little bit to drink it. Fuck I thought

what does Heraclitus have to say about this

I flipped to a random page:

"If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be
sought out and difficult."



Hmmmm. I said "It's really nice out here.
I have not yet solved the problems of life or death.
I have not been able to put to rest the questions either.
My life is a continuous burning.
Whatever I write is like scorch marks."


She said, "let's go on a walk."


I followed her with my bottle
as she walked past the front entrance of the motel
past downtown Austin
out into the scrub land
past purple scorpions
past the landfill wheeling with seagulls
until we got to a place
where the bottom of the sky -
a large tarp of canvas painted black with dots of white -
shuddered against the rim of the earth
where it was latched by a metal hook.
She leaned down to it.
"Dare me to unhook this?" She said.
Before I could answer, she did


I woke up alone in the motel room.
The bottle was knocked over near the TV, empty. No smokes either. Well.


In my mind, I tried to recall what happened after she unlatched the hook.


What I saw was a field of flames,
the moments running by slower and slower,
the tint of the flames being adjusted, scaled over
slowly from red to redpurple to purple to purpleblue to blue
to bluegreen to green
the time freezing

also, the angels were being painted over
till they were people




Tim Martin Steven Dalachinsky Jason Heroux Colin Van Der Woude Anders