Chris Martin
There is such action here the yard we can’t decide is front or back
a black fly chasing my breath Courtney tentative
on the harmonica The leaves dip and twist frantically modern
though their shadows show them up The bees are likewise
out-buzzed by the hummingbirds as wrens fill in and neither
of us feels the least bit ironic about it We live amid the machines
of our thought a geometry of sleeplessness forged
to the simple, ridiculous
by quiet unnamed desires I pay my ear
happinesses a plane blanketing the air a bee
scissoring through aghast at the plural these interloping
ghosts overlapping We startle at the jackhammer’s bony knock
a woodpecker We want these things to thing for us
want to see so as only to settle into a blinding
It was Saturday cicadas like expiring mechanisms hidden
in the leaves I was thinking about literalness It wasn’t
a case of nerves but still that’s what the body seemed
to be a wave that always crashing never crashes
Her color was the current world opening a charge to loiter
among flowers devoid of the kind of frictionlessness particular
to capitalism There wasn’t time to anticipate the coincidence
Heat lightning over novel territories a litter of cats
in the backyard silent the air-conditioner on like a thin blanket
of noise to cancel noise Frenzies of convenience blueberry
honey in my coffee resolutely aloof a leaf is a symptom of excess
the world opening onto want nerves waves honey
Everything insists on reappearing or it’s a silly conceit
that leaves need our attendance that the gentle movement of the
cable wires winding black like severed vines from the
brick is only artful in the frame of one’s attention
The air-conditioner burbles the rabbit-ears point a fly
scampers frenzied on the underside of the lampshade and the phone
is silent or fruition the phone
is obscene where hearing is normally moral Everything
insists that leaves need cable wires winding
black brick is only artful The air-conditioner
burbles a fly scampers frenzied or is silent is obsolete
An immense rain and nothing was saluting nobody
Dad’s shiny ankles so bare and without reason socks
wear one down It was feared I would become knock-kneed but I
was frightened more by the prospect of war and hid
my orthotics amid Christmas decorations Our substitute
teacher who was also the soda jerk regaled us gruesomely
had to have his friend’s brains removed from his ear by a surgeon
The night we first bombed Iraq I had only
just returned from scuba diving thinking how many ways one
might die Our babysitter drank perfume and sundry household
poisons Though the rain stopped the news kept
“pouring in” I was so young the night my finger was
crushed by the weight of the canon I did not scream
It’s afternoon and I look at digital equivalents of music look
insane because my eyes are ragged a flower weapon
begging seed I can’t stop desiring women with children their eyes
forceful tremoring the air of course I’m afraid
of women I’m afraid of men too the day thrown to pieces
symphonic goading a word—cognac tempering the skull
a cognate lurking insidious a country in my air She
a broom
is a sleeping thing warm like a machine or
among brooms The world persisting machinic I want you
to find its little slippages the incommensurate wefts I want
to bed in the unknowing fingers become I care about the movies
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