A perk to working in a library
All these poems are out of a book called No Starling by Nance Van Winckel
All Asides Aside
No more shocks. No bruises. No intentions. No will. No
Will I? No Where am I? No spaces to stand in
in the rain. No subways, no appointments, no whimpering
in one's sleep. The dot off its I. No I.
No island. No isolate or standing loose inside oneself
in the outside winds. So long to detox;
hello to redux, to Red River, Red Sea, to a room
on a barge in a dream.
On the table: a candle and books with print
too small to read. Out the window an egret
flies into endless black---a huge humility rising
and falling with her great white wings.
Untitled
They poke about the paths.
It's still early in the old life. The willow
that's about to become the tree of Go Fuck Yourself
is still a shady site for sweet, lingering goodbyes.
He and she console themselves. Surely
other children will pass this way
and eat the crumbs of crumbs.
At the far end of glories, which he will later mock
and she will name Morning,
Wilburville loomed. They woke
and came toward it, rounding
the bend we round today---just here
where the stream still hushes
and becomes the river's nuance.
Middle, Nowhere
Don't argue. This is where we're
stopping. Where we'll snack on
whatever's gleaming in this tree.
What good the sweetness, what use
the flesh, if not to inch us into dream?
Don't answer. Have more. Let
the caption say here we were
lost. Let the chapter tell we found ourselves
or loitered. Nowhere will be mentioned
our sad, right-on-the-money hearts.
Have this very last one then from the highest
branch. Don't fret. Nothing we did here
shall be found in a footnote or penned
with a leafy flourish into Spectacle #12.
Fuck It
A mist obscures the smoke
that's obscured the fire, and my sense
of having been set down like a satchel
on a crumbling step. My straps
unstrapped. The song in my head
over. When the song had said drift,
I'd drifted. When it said Take out your heart
and eat, I took. I ate. I swore
I could distinguish the Everlasting
from the Eternal---by that little blip of bliss
in the latter, and surely it shone.
I was in the last seconds of a last try
on a last poem, and they too
would pass. A window opens.
Fugue moment. Moment of needing
the formerly shunned world. Also
passing. Also past. If I'd been wrong
about the smoke, I'd be
wrong about the fire.
Breaking Only Little Laws
Might you say, do you think---if
you were me, would I pick
those kids up, take them
to Tennessee? Mightn't I, as you,
share the map? Last smoke in the pack?
Imagine I can get, thank-god, to the end
of a joke. Imagine I'm nicer
than you've known me, and see---
I offer salsa and don't even lick
the someone else's bowl. I'm wanting
honest input. Would I answer the kids
about when, for how long, or if
the storm of terror of childhood
ever shuts down? Might I say we crawl
out of the inland sea and fly up
in the way of geese, taking turns
at the head of the V? Wouldn't you, i.e., me,
turn off on Tra-la-la Lane
and toss a bra in the backseat? Kiss
once to get the strangeness out?
Twice to seal the deal? Think
please. Think a minute
and just say yea or nay.