Mark Lamoureux

from SOMETIMES THINGS SEEM VERY DARK: POEMS FOR FRANCESCA WOODMAN



22.
[Untitled New York 1979-80]


The eye-cloth
& the death-cloth
& the cloth of this knowing
     rent
     mended by
the same scissor that
chimes the dead angles
     the human geometry

wheel of torsos      visor
     slits of the armored
dusk where the eye
     glides
who holds the key
to this (rib)cage?

         Not I

     not the furrows
     of the brow
     or the mirror of the lake





Dear Francesca,


Say I could be happy on the first warm day of spring wearing a new leather jacket, or eating leaf-colored gelato in Nafplio. Say I am happiest when I am furthest from home. A word that you would not speak. Our bodies are our homes. I am no longer welcome there. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. Say someone has the wrong idea. Say whenever anyone has the wrong idea, a fluttering silver fish dies.




30.
[Sloan Providence, Rhode Island 1976]


Not to know
the terror of the noonday
city:
         the sun that is
         a stain on the wall

     marred tapestry
     of the idle in the
     interrogation

             of the hourglass

the spyglass
     the glass eye of the recorder

     image lifted like
     rice      paper

     from the affront of this
         this breathing
         in strange places

this laurel wreath
     of strangers
         drags the oracle

     by the mane

the fishes' eggs without number
     the city's mouths
         without number
we must count
all the berries          on the wreath
         to enter

this house


         with no use for us



31.
[Untitled Providence, Rhode Island, 1978]


In the noontime
I sewed the spine

I broke
the pastel crayon
     at the seam

         The book written &
         the book sewn

     with the sliver of bone
     with the thimble of blood

with the eyes shut tight
     against the semblance

in the wall the semblance
that walks the hall from
where I have departed

to not be called back
to where the books seem

     to be speaking
     to the air

     to you
     to me

to the narrow seam
     inbetween





Mark Lamoureux: My work has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as The Denver Quarterly, Fence, Conduit, GutCult, Coconut and other print and on-line journals. My first book, Astrometry Organon, is due to be published by Spuyten Duyvil/Meeting Eyes Bindery in 2007. I teach English at Kingsborough Community College, and run Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry.





Mark Lamoureux Lois Marie Harrod Sam Silva Eve Rifkah Christopher Barnes Roger Singer David McLean