And this last poem is from a book
called, The Alps, which was--
which is a book I wrote for my parents.
It's crudely about the day they got married in 1972
in the Swiss Alps.
So it's a sort of a big wedding celebration.
And because I'm anti-wedding, it's
sort of an anti-celebration.
And the title of this one is Trinity Neutrality, the Draft.
"The day the Trinity weapon was tested,
heat massaged, someone pushing by the shoulders.
I fell back into the river.
There were no grunts, arrows split the gates.
The pond black, threw to slow pivoting deer, fight,
ice parts, noise like a lady winding her skirts
around halved bodies.
Daughters encasing, lit periodically.
Blue holiday lights, Schrund Herba goat, Garland,
a partial pictorial vote, Campion, eagle, worker,
passenger, Bavarian, ringing the waddle of any bird what dare.
Pansies grow.
Lace, cida, soldanella, boar, the entire beast spread
before the last leg, stripped from the mouth.
Lesser, ash, butter, Cassandra, another ghost soldier
by default.
The day the Trinity weapon was deployed,
I kept myself between the ostensible routes
loose in the melt. jute plants knocking,
miniature soldiers, ascending the sails
of the handcrafted mills, to write
from the sun on the roadside, ripping amiable locals.
I love the way fat spreads across hardening rolls.
I love sardines in a good way.
I love the way sardines pour off the shoulders of men and women
standing on cold tiles.
I love yogurt.
I love cheese.
I love sticking my finger into the holes,
in the trunks of old pines, pulling it out,
not with sap, but with yogurt.
I love grapes.
I love bread.
I love the way bread explodes when
pulled apart by two people in fatal desperation.
I climb inside my love of fatal desperation.
I climb inside my love of beef, slow moving against my eyes.
I suck beef from the vine.
I suck butter from grapes.
I love tongues.
I love beef tongues.
I love to sink my hands sideways into beef tongues.
They said my grandfather bit off his tongue
and spit it out the window of the train,
carrying from the South to the high flame desert of the North.
As it turns out, it was not his tongue he bit,
but love fell from the window.
I love how love fell from the window,
turning lead into a small circle of dried leaves by a river.
There was one living leaf.
I don't mind that there was one living leaf.
By the one living leaf, I spread myself.
Apples-- I love hard, green peaches, meatballs,
the way fruit explodes when a body
is dropped from above onto fruit, ham, of course, milk.
Thank you.