Five Poems from Gimme the Pretty
This is sufficient.
See also, perhaps—
see also,
the names of certain rivers.
Possible cognates.
A somewhat similar form.
Reader, it has been suggested.
*
Reader, mark this diffident tone — is and has.
Is and has and what thoughts I’d’ve…
Reader—
a slip.
*
Would that you were & would that you had—
This is the barest of commitments.
Reader, let us suppose
(You’re underwhelmed—I get it.)
a truly epic volta.
*
So this is where we find ourselves.
Suggestive metaphor.
Slow retrograde.
I’ll tell you what. I can manage throve.
I can manage probable.
Iamb.
Purgative.
In the same sense, a reduction,
the first
a long lone (I meant) a long line
unattested,
elemental — what’s not sensical,
i.e., a parent, predicative—
keep, stay, etc.,
except when noted,
any stretch of water
of sufficient depth.
Not sinking, not aground.
*
Reader, make fast what calms and fogs oblige.
& if ever,—
if ever a body’s
unseeming
whelves what makes you whole — reader,
we are almost only literal.
Almost,
& in every way unsound.
Thou kyndlest, &
thou setst a flame.
Reader, we are borne unto & brim-full —
havened in what likens
& in what we cast aside.
Reader, I’d’ve left this undone, gainsaid.
What mis-occasions & what kins us whole.
*
Reader, I could not stay the sea —
the sky’s
belikened visage —
source and recompense.
*
Reader, I’d unalloy.
I’d belacken.
Reader, I’d although desire in you.
*
Reader, what is not to love.
Believe you me.
Some say a rite reversed leaves nothing
&
that wonders reft of wonder fail.
I say
what thisness does, undid, beguiles
& you —
you’s a binding,
o’erwrought.
Reader,
*
You know from tides. You know from wake & whence.
That one should be until & to such extent.
This trues, this lightens, this fills the sails.
This respite
[Wait for it.]
I supposes.
*
Reader, you’ll’ve noticed then’s implicit.
From one, the other
& all’s gone pear-shaped.
Reader, what’ve you said that’s made me so?
*
A taking-stock—
cedarandearth
she said,
will this end up in a poem,
& she said,
I am rift.
*
Reader,
unsaying’s not a thing.
& when’s no less a becoming.
So
call it back.
Call now’s unending & what
ceaselessness betides
as unto you a song.
O, stark evermore.
She’s the distance.
She’s that what that belies & more—
Reader,
everything has at least one definition.
& is this supposed to comfort me?
Reader,
let’s neither of us fuck this up
or,
let’s to the fullest extent—
either’s
in keeping.
Reader, either’s the white peaks
& uh,
what’s beyond compare—
*(<———— cowardice, duh.)
If nothing’s as readable as something,
then where’s the slip—
then where’s the loss.
Reader,
this is what you came for—
realer done right.
(finger the break /
what’s broke in twain)
What I could not say & the moment before—
goose-skein & what ends ever-leaming.
Reader,
every poem’s the first poem—an O cast whenward.
*
You can’t have it both ways—
what’s cast’s as good
as thrown & I—
I’s a knowing un-done.
Reader,
what’s order but the light in lightlessness.