Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

AND LATER I SPEAK
in a minute I close the book and pigeons circle
their shack on the roof across the street
as if some aftermath of something without a peak or a low point
were falling, the idea of which is sunlight the idea of which
is washed away now by this beat down below the stone and setting sun
in a minute there is memory, in a minute the sound of memory
and then after that some dent in the air where something
was and now isn‘t gone there is only music which is the sound
of memory an old drunk relative repeating stories from when landscapes were
static and grass began somewhere just beyond this kitchen table at 3 a.m.
there is only a comma after every later to indicate that after a hole
has been placed in the narrative you must follow the source of light
coming through that hole trembling like paper from smudged wind
called formless renting a smell of dead chickens or fresh bread
from the poultry market next door there is only some other language built
from other scaffolding looming in dark spaces between words made into referent,
that or that you see it too filling with itself and then with itself smothered
you see it brush itself off but what is it a minute later and I speak
into the phone and try to read the book at the same time I touch my hand to tile
on the wall in the bathroom with the phone to my ear and misplace words
it can‘t be other than this because the ruins of what was stretch between
the sidewalk and push their way back out green you see it too filling with itself,
that‘s what it is it can‘t be and isn‘t another thing I wanted
to include here is a smothered story but one where
the edges which we call the beginning and end are still apparent
like mud at either side of a pond
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