Experimental Poetry

Introduction: Two planets in one house with no running water. Materials and methods: Armatures, birth tusks, suspension points, ornamental vines, levitation, lament. Results: Limbo of dupes. Discussion: Over gin and tonic and the years and the objections of Venezuela and the right way to fold a dollar into a shark. Conclusion: We will call it a standoff but remember it as a burning palmetto. References: You want to know the trouble with you?

Puente de Alcántara

The river saw you the river saw your phantom and/or your phantom ghosting downriver darkly, ghosted on doubted waters.

Toward Bluefields

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be sold. We can try again, America. Give up the depraved man amongst you. Unbind the bird boy. Unchange the Agovadro constant. Start deploying. Participants will make creatures of their choosing. An expert in a dying field, I am searching for the bones of a name (no body) from this line to this line; from this string to this string, I am searching for the least knotted of all knots. The final hitman was offered only via television. Two of the anomalies were parallel: I drew a tenuous comparison/I drew my trusty .44.

True Escape

Bound to make a real splash, boys. Come hither, shark, and my sharks infold: The second stanza, with shark        fraught, became a pillar of salt. From whence sharks have increas’d; for shark doth seize my shark—shiv shiver. [Having outswum

Untitled (If Conceptual Art Is Just Pointing at Things, Was John the Baptist the First Performance Artist?)

These are strange times indeed to put all our faith in knowing. On the desert highway headed east, we poured one out to knowing. We saw anemones blooming high over Aenon. Fool’s fire, they called it. Or, an action or series of actions. Wise monsters hide their knowing. And then, the sound of dripping water under the cloche of air. Yet another sea–sky metaphor mapped onto bodies. Sorrow compassed all knowing. TVs long buried and still muttering: O, we had objects for gods. Diaghilev grinning in his finest madness, the Mismade Girl wary of knowing. Ten years ago, now: Night bridge, lights untrellising along the Monongahela River. Salamanders poisoned the blood. He breathes through a smokestack, not even knowing. All the planets once burned bright in the globes of his eyes. Reporter: I have found your head—or do we look for another—?