#42

A glacial metaphor. Mirror-maid. The Hesperides in their cabin, chimney smoking. The moon like a proper eye on string. He had passed on horseback through hillsides, Tabitha tailing quietly. Lightning, at dark, mirrored on the snowscape. As whiteflies rose from the wagon tracks. "7500 dollars for a film of your despair." Smeared with watercolor: notecard snippet. Tabitha, what a talent you have for tattling.

The would-be patron snickered. Oh, so eternity wants a name? Modesty. A taunt, you see. Call it genocide. Distraction. The beer was never good here, though full the tavern was. Leave off. Build a table, tall - where I'll sit and write of Tennyson. The good years settled like a barter. Sight of mine to spare. Tabitha, close your eyes, as the steps fall in fours up the stairs. He is going to take his desire, and be spun like a pig on a stake.

Caesura!
Caesura!
Caesura!

#41

Tabitha tapered to a pose. Lucas kneeled in some stone cathedral. "Still-lighted in a secret shrine." Where the sun, embroidered in silver, parted clouds for the crossers of plains. Mediastinum, spoke the sage. You will strike it from the books. Each a partner like a house of cards and remembered many failures. Catechism, primal naming. "Jennie, Blake, the moon, the sky." Or so read the donna from her tower and her knitting.

In the woods, Actaeon bent towards a bristled flower, and the Bogart nestled in a hollowed tree. Tender, these sleepers with eyes. A kind of lucid cunning that led them. A cyclamen that dies, and then flowers, like a word. "Have you not seen," said the dream, "where the path will lead you?" As Sean, in the real, purchased jeans, and charged them to his credit card. Virtue. Billboard. Strength. Such a terrible time for walkers. For Les, Kerry, Erica, Rich, Jeehyun, Micah, and Sam.

#40

How many warring roads through hills. Evening stampedes. Horses in triplicate. Whether the bad wind blows, I would borrow a cantos. Tie my finger to a bridge. And the image-maker - why, he stands "unadorned by circumstance." One could curl up and die in patience. Celebrate the sooth-saying that departures profit. Immanence. Kindly drawstring.

Electrical prose that grafts. The flowers of burden in weeds. Must one keep on, as an inclement, ringing the curving bell? Like a mad song aggravantemente. Dress him as a traveler. And he passes on roads her home. Crooked pin-stars spinning, Tabitha. Level the radio, prayer. A tattle who echos in pilfered accents. With candle through the barbed field. And Babylon, my girl with swollen eyes. Near the sea where he sees what he sees. All the tide in your arms at the moment of his longing. Yes.

#39

Dream-image, you, in the white of winter-time, reticent with tea. My father, as ever, absent. The margins of our past: no currency, no will to straighten the oblique nor reason forth the sun. The unreal, I've read, cannot be counted. And you, stirring your spoon in pale distraction, your face freckled and still, have never been divided. Oh, that home we shared from which the cold would not disperse, those rooms with slanted floor where you tossed, and stitched, and crawled with cats in angles. This dream-you who follows your lead and remains seated across like a language - remember, Jennie, remember?

Here, where absence will not compromise, the days conspire toward your vanishing. You too have found the exit: history ending like a lease expired. The time remaining as tangible as snow. And so I have clasped you to my heart (coupled twins to my longing extended). Left yourself shadows that wander and graze in the text of poets, the doors that they open to houses washed with vinegar. Remember, Jennie, remember. Each word, like a letter, reads itself aloud.

#38

The lodge was circumscribed by stars. Mine eye a silken pillow. Imagine, if you will, the breaking. Of a crystal cage set humbly down on tile. An offering lit by torch-light. And the shadows of a queen in scarves in knots that numbered thousands. "A key," she stated, as if in writing, "that opens no lock you will locate." And what could Lucas do but nod? For choice belonged to real-er places.

A key it was. A crystal key, for a crystal cage exchanged. Where the stars stood stone-still and the library shelves were empty. Granite trumpets blared. Dancers swung their limbs like hammers. A feast for every movement of the dial. The court - exception - where temptation was considered and precise. So it was, as it were, and so on. As Lucas reached for a slice of bread no hand prepared. And the conversation fell in measured notes that skirted memory's interest. All was as usual, this aftermath.

But a transaction had still occurred. And one among them drank no glass of wine.