FOUNDER
When the horse dies
The brain is last to
succumb.
The thrashing legs stilled.
The twitching lip.
The eye shines onward
Desperate to live. I wait
For it to film.
Needle in the vein
She goes down fast
Not like a wall crumbling
In tutus of dust
but like a stricken tree,
sudden,
Awful, loud.
Now at last
Lying peaceful
Relaxed as she slept
When newborn
Her dam standing sentry
In the ancient habit of
mares.
Founder, that’s a word
For horses and ships.
Coffin bones sinking and
spars
Deep creaking agony
Of blood and ocean,
Common denominator of salt.
She licked salt blocks,
A bin of oats,
Bucket dark with water.
Once she raced like a
schooner
Hooves and sails flying,
Steel in her mouth
A crowd shouting
Like a crew sighting land.
Her stall empty now,
Lonesome bay of straw
Gilded with dust.
In winter in the stone barn
She steamed
As if below decks.
In summer, manure smoked
As if alive, inoffensive
waste
Of grass eaters, a holiness
mad
Nebuchadnezzar hungered for.
Evolution made the horse
Pose upon landlocked toes
Like a ballet dancer. The hoof cannot
expand
Blood flows and flows
Loosening anchors of laminae
Till like a ship broadsided in big
seas
The horse rocks back
Sweating, its salted hide
Glazing eyes and grinding
teeth
Like a keel sundering
Is lost now, lost
To the renderer and his
hooks.
From "Dead Horses" published
by FutureCycle Press--first printed in the new renaissance
FORECLOSURE
When everything was lost,
he snuck into the house
that once was his, pulled
out
the copper pipes, the color
of
her hair when they first
met,
removed the brass faucets,
then the sink and the
commode,
sledgehammering them into
oblivion, the way she’d
slept
in the arms of Luminol ignoring his
old
rant, tore out the cabinets,
defaced the walls with
sprayed
obscenities that she’d laugh
off
not caring one damn thing
how he felt, pulled up the
carpets,
poured grease on the wood
floors.
She’d stripped memories
like wallpaper, turned her
head
against the scrape of his
whiskers.
He broke the bed into
kindling,
she’d never sleep with any
man
but him if he could help it.
Then
he poured concrete down all the
drains.
Try to fix that.
From "The Wingback Chair"
published by FutureCycle Press. first printed in Stoneboat
CLIO ASCENDANT
Ah Clio, fact-finder, your stone sandals
On the pedestal, how weary you
become
Truth-telling. Your opal eyes
observing
The past’s indelible shadow
Unreeling as the centuries
lengthen
In a sorry persistence. The owl-faced
moon
Stares at a landscape on which you
inscribe
Endless notes for a bible of
certainty.
Clio, the charm of fallacy
Waylays you. How the ingenuity of
story
Where the bear casts off its
pelt,
The stepmother burns with
affection,
The woman abjures persuasions of the
serpent,
Can turn out any way you
wish.
The ease of it. Tongues forking like
tributaries.
The granite visages cracking. Each
slab
Falling with its glyphs
To a fine dust you sweep,
broom-mother,
Over the sills of
illumination.
Climb the blue stairs of
concordance,
Risers of dream and waking
To loose the knots of sober
research,
Embrace a cascade of plots,
Elaborate, convoluted,
convincing
As the gravity of your
transcriptions.
Clio at the keyhole of every secret
door
Where the unspeakable
bargains
Transpire, acts of
desperation,
Murder and desire. The wasp of
time
Buzzes your ears. O Stinger,
Sweetheart in the cave of
shadows
You spread your fingers taking us
all
On a beautiful one-way ride.
From "Ah Clio" published by
Kattywompus Press --first printed in Atlanta
Review
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