How is their face different from a castle?
--Ana Bozicevic-Bowling, "Legal Counsel"
I returned home from Savannah last week, and Document was waiting for me. It is a literal passport, and with it I traveled behind the Organdy Curtain of the author's face and into her gray-weather country, where the landscape is lovely and where the speech is free. Gaze upon my gratitude--or better yet, come join me here!
14 comments:
Holy crap -- if only this could be my WoW avatar
You have extracted this face from my very daymares! I am without speech, or with a howl.
I did extract it! I extracted it like vanilla.
POEMS ARE JOKES
Ask any near-sighted mouse with wings
Crying, “Cheep, cheep!” to keep track
Of its whereabouts, a keyhole
Is shaped like a skull, but life, life!
Comes from clinging to things
Upside down. Life is a keyhole
Inverted and wearing a symbolic comb,
Tiara or cluster fluff for a crown.
Rabid, hissing and drooling,
Baring your fishbone teeth,
All that you’ve learned about groveling
And mewling is merely the obverse
Accomplice of acquiring power,
Merely the practice of cruelty
In the guise of high conscience. No one
Outdoes a beggar’s savagely tender
Lack of remorse. An unopposed army
Invades with its grand parade. The bats
And beggars, prudently hopeful,
Wave thousands of welcoming flags,
Like thousands of brides auditioning
For marriage, thousands of bats
Flying around, hoping to swallow
Some bugs, or those brides,
The albino tadpoles of destiny.
After they roost, shivering
And chittering, one of them suddenly
Does a handstand, and the bats
Murmur in unison, “Sh! Svetlana
Is having a nervous breakdown!”
Svetlana is lucky her friends don’t rise
In the sky again and kill her.
Cluster fluff, ha! Also, does this one contain more animals than usual?
"How is their face different from a castle?"
Chorus:
Disco loves you
Loves you, loves you--
And someday you
Will love disco too!
That one eludes me, I'm afraid to say. Might I be out of practice?
DISCO FISH
Tricia, what do you know
About badger fur,
Silver-tipped, super
Badger fur, except
For the gray sky in November,
The cold bowl wherein
The wind's exquisite brush
Whips up for us the foam
Of pity, folly and awe.
O Tricia, many are cold
But few are frozen.
Look at your head,
Those polka dots, sequins,
Lights and scales
On an inverted
Keyhole, or what
Elizabeth Bishop called
A prostitute fish's
Principal beauty
As polished off
By "a friend
Of her grandfather's"
Wizened tool
Down at the fishhouses.
Aha, now I see! Very astute, my friend.
BADGER
The touch of erotic possession
And power a confident woman
Confers intuitively
On her mate of the moment
At the nape of his coccyx
(En passant! Fully clothed!)
Is the spot where a badger
Yields its softest, superior fur,
Fat man among chubbier skunks
And slender weasels, called silver-
Tipped as if for the edge
Which accomplishes
Harvest, hand-manufactured
Shaving brushes, or pure
For fur ordinaire, better or best
For fur from anywhere
Else on its pelt, him or her,
Grinning when baited, battered,
Murdered, rising from the dead
And fighting for its life again
Like a madman, according
To John Clare, who was there.
The nape of his coccyx? Is it possible? Let's take this a step further and give a knee to his penis as well.
[You're right! I should have said "sacrum" and cut my losses. "Sacrum of the coccyx"? I dunno. Here's one for S., who since he speaks some Ewe and beaucoup West African French, hustled at his Dhaka hotel the daughter of someone at Togo's embassy in Bangladesh, who demurred, "Mais je suis trop petite, Monsieur!"]
HOUND
Old Bowwow's lucky
He’s got that silver
Pelt on his prow,
Since it’s what forestalled
This latest minx from adjusting
His bowtie’s silken token
Of dangling
Balls in an uproar
Jauntily knotted
And succeeded by the kiss
She would have bestowed
On his bannister's
Glabrous newel post,
Hot and moist enough
To remind the hound how
Even a skinny, onyx
Wishbone stew of girl,
Although bestirred, could enjoy
A gift of wine and dinner,
Amused, undisturbed.
BADGERDOM
Badgers are gendered sows and boars,
And litter in fives or (mostly) fours,
And mate like goats and humans,
All year round, requiring interest,
Not estrous, the sow at four months,
The boar a two-year-old toddler,
A ratio to ponder, but an embryo
Then enters a trauma, an interregnum
Of inanimate suspension, a vital
Vacuum or wait thought to foster,
Along with its peculiar condyle jaw–-
Locking its chin to the far pit
Or point of its cranium–-a badger’s
Uncommon stubbornness. This lasts
Until the end of December,
When frost has fully overwhelmed
The pumpkin, and the sow’s fat melts
Releasing steroids and endorphins,
And gestation hastens to complete itself,
Generally by February, the little Aquarians
Nursed in the badgers’ nervously
Replicated tunnel network, the sett,
Until ready to employ their designated
Latrine. So they wear their gowns
And tuxedos of fur, sleep all day, and then
Bright-eyed, inquisitively wander around
All night. Beside stubborn jaws, they have
Outrageously long, effective claws.
How Marianne Moore of you, no?
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