These next two are a couple of poems
from a series that I'm working on,
which is tentatively, right now, titled "Plume, Plumage."
"Port Authority."
"One-- "stink of the television.
Impression on my fingers.
They smell and I smell of garlic in this opulence
and of territory.
The rumble approaches.
Can you hear the war, and what does it say?
Do I wish for another highway, another pained encounter with?
The whirlwind of traveling mistakes me, and I do succumb.
The kitchen and the bathroom, merely closets.
I am trying to keep things hidden.
I am trying for florid prose and lapse.
Or how outside is different and my eyes
can't adjust quick enough.
Setting aside the rings, fingers shaping clay
to forget the process, resurfaces
as tool for recuperation, writing from the dump
about the beauty of trash.
The wind has picked apart the trash.
The food in this town has gotten progressively worse.
Two-- generating borders provokes my dismay.
Why don't I write about identity?
I do and don't punctuate well.
Those are swallows made difficult.
These are swallows as animals.
They have plumage.
This is a question swerving towards species preservation.
Don't we belong to the same instance?
As though it were enough.
I am thoroughly bored, resisting the splayed timeline.
Presuppose an existence based on extinction.
Anyway, what's the use?
I'm not welcome in certain parts, and in certain parts
the summer is unbearably humid, and they don't have fans.
My map is mad and torn in all the wrong locations.
The streets are crammed together.
How can anyone live so close?
It's only a map.
I'm going to need a new one.
Sorry-- it's only a map.
I'm going to Prague and will need a new one.
Beatrice assures me that Prague isn't in danger.
Thank God.
This is a gesture towards self-preservation,
while everything else but intuition slights safety.
People are tired of being afraid,
of hanging around the borders.
My fingers stink, inherently political,
but the plea isn't clear.
I am getting to it, illuminating the century as the end of it.
Yes, poets do matter.
Elliot catapulted us into the bang versus whimper binary,
though the spring bleeds into summer.
I still eat bruised fruit and take showers frequently.
Twenty eight days ago, I wasn't sure of it, the daylight
or the birdsong, and nothing's changed,
edging toward another paradigm to capture another frame,
though the moment's already thoroughly shifted.
The green on the other side of the century isn't an oasis.
I am trying to be frugal.
I am trying to be precise.
Our encounters matter as encounters.
But the species is centric.
The species are centric."