THE SACRIFICE
after Pierre Reverdy
nothing but blue
stains on the sheet
a portfolio
remembered smiles
a spiked head
surmounts
a crown of arms
a shrug
gears start up
the mountain
bronze wire
slips around the world
somewhere doors
spring open
in numbered sequence
by name by size
a roll call
the whole crowd
showered in glass shards
dewdrops
coastal breezes
saturate the arid lands
the weathered buildings
jitter themselves to bits
girlish fingertips
sprout leaves
eyes blink open
beneath the mosses
the occasional foot
crushes an eyelid
the lowered blinds
bow down
the head swivels
hides in a thicket of arms
memories wake
bestir themselves
it is night
who goes away
BROWNACRE
After the clear plastic sheeting has been pulled back, folded away
After each woody rhizome has been pried loose from the soil
Each nest of roots traced to its capillary ends
Small pebbles tossed aside, worms relocated elsewhere
After the soil has been rubbed through a sieve
After the ground has been leveled with rakes and stakes and string
There is an end to labor, an end to motion
Nothing sown
Nothing germinating in the bare dirt
The light strikes each granule the same as any other
A windlessness rises
Becomes a precondition
Why is it hard to admit you couldn’t live here
No one could live here
This is not the texture of the real, lacking event, lacking structure
This is neither landscape nor memory, this is parable, a fantasy of restraint
But why does this shame you
Even now you’re trying to hide that your gaze is drifting upward
This plainness cannot hold your attention
You’re searching the sky for some marker of time, of change
In a cloudless sky the sun beats down
But if you observe that the sun warms the soil, you must also concede that the soil will grow colder
The sun stains only the body, and the body is what is not at issue here
