Michelle Greenblatt
#7 Rockslide of Whispers
Rockslide of whispers in the palm of your hand. Unmistakable tracks in snow. Curved-as-a-comma-voice calls me. Flat broken glass lodges in my palms. This is sweet asphyxiation. I lower my eyes to pass through his doorway. Light licks the ashes of nighttime which licks the ashes Blue leaves behind. Tiny, hidden, a metronome tick tick ticks away the seconds between us.
Heliocentric wire, stopgap fire, festooned with rags
3.18-21.2006
#8 Day You Pounded Me into a Circle
When I smoke I hear the breath in my lungs go in-out-in-out. Every time I inhale I suck in spiders, their sticky silken webs. The day you pounded me in a circle I just laughed. The only indicators were the rips in my jeans and the beads of bloody sweat that gathered above my lip. Now I just watch you through a bright window, festoon gasoline soaked rags around my naked body. In my scarred left hand I hold pills. One to make me stronger, one to make me smaller, one to make me sleep.
Nemesis, kerosene, aridlands
3.18-21.2006
#10 Contraband River
I crawl through a bright window, through an odyssey of windows that all look the same. It humbles me. I scissor a hole through time with my kiss; my face is festooned with lips. I have a scar on my iris as the dark stones pass through the contraband river. I leave my kingdom. I wake to a yellow world, foreknown to warm. It is the way of things to run from me.
Slit cloud, stimulus mountain, clock on the rooftops
3.18-21.2006
#11 Six Years into My Posthumous Life
What wafts in from the cave is not smoke from that slab of time that lies on the marble, meatlike. Sunday after Sunday, we labor in our prisons with old faces, old roots, old warnings. Six years into my posthumous life, I feel old. Here I am, against the hill’s hanging relief. In the sunken lane, slower than change of light, the wind hardens while it smudges the scenery Crayola colors: Hunter Green and Forest Brown. No matter I’m a swollen statistic. I’ve bent your life, and the plethora of multicolored roads that lead to it.
Bloodstripe on the finger, eyelash wish, one last kiss
3.18-21.2006
#12 A Priori Detectors
Prismed glass scatters the rays of loose light into flimsy rainbows. One more brain:storm from the curdy clouds and one more feathered avalanche. At home with Kyle, tonight I skate on fat crusty ridges of ice. A penny skitters across the lake’s solid surface, tossed by a child, and I wonder what she has wished for. My a priori detectors tremor, gag of dreams stuffed in my mouth.
Retina rot, blueblack brilliance, nature of rain
3.18-21.2006
#14 Stone among Stones
A new god with narrow eyes looks down on us today. He fills our room with unbelievables. The sea is the word liquefied, and we walk up hard roads with stiff heels, our mouths full of fat. I am small-fingered; my eyes are two frosty hollows. I chew on the day’s gristle, a stone among stones.
Sun-torment, storm impression, faerie
3.18-21.2006
#18 Ragged Sieve of Awkward Sun
The canals, the pits talk amongst themselves about hell-yawns, the stringing and unstringing of paradoxes on a very plain level. When they look up, they remember nothing but diagrams (in thicket form). How cold can one person stay, confronted with the knowledge they taste like paper when kissed? Clandestine stars gather round the moon; hell is not imageless, but how far, how sufficiently far must a surface-nerve travel along the traceries, the ragged sieve of awkward sun?
Soil, wrought wire, certainty
Michelle Greenblatt is the new co-poetry editor of AND PER SE AND, formerly known as "mprsnd". Her first book brain:storm, went to press this January. She has been published or will be published in these magazines: can we have our ball back?, eratio, Kulture Vulture, Dusie, Xerolage, Moria, Blackbox, Peek Review, Naked Sunfish, Fire, AUGHT, BlazeVOX, X-stream, Shampoo, Word for/ Word, Admit Two, The Argotist Online, Big Bridge, & The Anemone Sidecar. Her second book, Ashes and Seeds, from which these haibun are taken, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX.
#7 Rockslide of Whispers
Rockslide of whispers in the palm of your hand. Unmistakable tracks in snow. Curved-as-a-comma-voice calls me. Flat broken glass lodges in my palms. This is sweet asphyxiation. I lower my eyes to pass through his doorway. Light licks the ashes of nighttime which licks the ashes Blue leaves behind. Tiny, hidden, a metronome tick tick ticks away the seconds between us.
Heliocentric wire, stopgap fire, festooned with rags
3.18-21.2006
#8 Day You Pounded Me into a Circle
When I smoke I hear the breath in my lungs go in-out-in-out. Every time I inhale I suck in spiders, their sticky silken webs. The day you pounded me in a circle I just laughed. The only indicators were the rips in my jeans and the beads of bloody sweat that gathered above my lip. Now I just watch you through a bright window, festoon gasoline soaked rags around my naked body. In my scarred left hand I hold pills. One to make me stronger, one to make me smaller, one to make me sleep.
Nemesis, kerosene, aridlands
3.18-21.2006
#10 Contraband River
I crawl through a bright window, through an odyssey of windows that all look the same. It humbles me. I scissor a hole through time with my kiss; my face is festooned with lips. I have a scar on my iris as the dark stones pass through the contraband river. I leave my kingdom. I wake to a yellow world, foreknown to warm. It is the way of things to run from me.
Slit cloud, stimulus mountain, clock on the rooftops
3.18-21.2006
#11 Six Years into My Posthumous Life
What wafts in from the cave is not smoke from that slab of time that lies on the marble, meatlike. Sunday after Sunday, we labor in our prisons with old faces, old roots, old warnings. Six years into my posthumous life, I feel old. Here I am, against the hill’s hanging relief. In the sunken lane, slower than change of light, the wind hardens while it smudges the scenery Crayola colors: Hunter Green and Forest Brown. No matter I’m a swollen statistic. I’ve bent your life, and the plethora of multicolored roads that lead to it.
Bloodstripe on the finger, eyelash wish, one last kiss
3.18-21.2006
#12 A Priori Detectors
Prismed glass scatters the rays of loose light into flimsy rainbows. One more brain:storm from the curdy clouds and one more feathered avalanche. At home with Kyle, tonight I skate on fat crusty ridges of ice. A penny skitters across the lake’s solid surface, tossed by a child, and I wonder what she has wished for. My a priori detectors tremor, gag of dreams stuffed in my mouth.
Retina rot, blueblack brilliance, nature of rain
3.18-21.2006
#14 Stone among Stones
A new god with narrow eyes looks down on us today. He fills our room with unbelievables. The sea is the word liquefied, and we walk up hard roads with stiff heels, our mouths full of fat. I am small-fingered; my eyes are two frosty hollows. I chew on the day’s gristle, a stone among stones.
Sun-torment, storm impression, faerie
3.18-21.2006
#18 Ragged Sieve of Awkward Sun
The canals, the pits talk amongst themselves about hell-yawns, the stringing and unstringing of paradoxes on a very plain level. When they look up, they remember nothing but diagrams (in thicket form). How cold can one person stay, confronted with the knowledge they taste like paper when kissed? Clandestine stars gather round the moon; hell is not imageless, but how far, how sufficiently far must a surface-nerve travel along the traceries, the ragged sieve of awkward sun?
Soil, wrought wire, certainty
Michelle Greenblatt is the new co-poetry editor of AND PER SE AND, formerly known as "mprsnd". Her first book brain:storm, went to press this January. She has been published or will be published in these magazines: can we have our ball back?, eratio, Kulture Vulture, Dusie, Xerolage, Moria, Blackbox, Peek Review, Naked Sunfish, Fire, AUGHT, BlazeVOX, X-stream, Shampoo, Word for/ Word, Admit Two, The Argotist Online, Big Bridge, & The Anemone Sidecar. Her second book, Ashes and Seeds, from which these haibun are taken, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX.
posted by mark young at 10:52 AM
1 Comments:
nice, v nice
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