Tyler Flynn Dorholt


from NEGATIVES

Moi qui fais profession des choses muettes—Nicolas Poussin

  1

That the presence of man and woman together is a social one and that I shall consider audiences here; maybe bring to question the pitch of a laugh track. To lie by saying spring does not sexually fuck me up or that I am not the best voyeur here. I have little presence because I did not speak up at dinner tables, did not strike a physical existence but thought heavily a feeling inward. It is true that one can confuse a woman with a row boat, paddle miles out to sea. Everything in the exterior is economical—the attitude one takes in taking up the corner of the room, the hors d’ oeuvres in silver circles passing, the dumb little tree that took care of you, the group of quiet sweat I am.

/

You and a hand held thus an other
the joining in moving the rein breeze makes
how intricate the people watching
so quiet with a knife
to eat inexpensively to talk about porches
maybe we prefer mentioning to
saying that two knots are needed
the dock a holder-in
blood is actually reef skin
every tree leans at something expansive


  2

That the new status of the world is perfectly bound to the size of my shirt, holding it lightly in the store, pulling back the tag and bringing it home. Magic magically reproduced the religion I arrived in. Rocks in a fish bowl, what I realized was just two people orbiting around one another in a room, laughing at the atrocity of contemporary film, thinking about what the other is feeling as the other thinks and only too. Before you arrived, having been encouraged by spines on books, taking midnight down with unnoticing, I organized my shelves by material: the higher the lighter, the cotton then satin and so. At least once a week I ripped the bins down and fell in the clothes, colorless, holding my arms out to the mirror.

/

It made sense that shopping
meant feeling better
I carry books that talk of religion
around how the notion of drinking
is tiring is not a great list of films
to see the layout of the outfit
have it on then tie the stride
great against oneself the looking


  3

The other thing that is visible this morning—not for any reason I can put my physical ligaments on—is the convex arboretum your shadow sits in, the suspect draw bridge rusted and untouched, the proximity of our unbuilt farm. It is a long way down to the lakeshore from the slope of this plain and having sat here every afternoon it is true that something moves us. But what about when movement becomes contingency? Is it that another thing follows with recognition of what has passed—water after water or why the ground beneath it is still. Yet emergency too, needing you, the consequences of staring down an open mark of land.

/

What position is from audience
the dome contains the party
other ways to get over
go the south more separate
accident from solution
sleeping has clothes


from have the Hands Ask it Back

I consider what has gone along as opposed to across the river. We tracked the blood as far as the dam. Carp turned up in jaundice shots of confusion. Imaginary lines cast their debris into half-frozen spots of swish—brain as it sits its storm door stance inside the expanse. Each cow with spots as separate as. I do only a black and white thought for this flight, the line out of its coupled clasp in another thin reel. We traced the blood as far as the dam. New current cornering and out. I consider. Cattails sideline in applause for the river, one wind-clap for an eye-graph. When I was five I ran away to the basement and drew God on the wall. This river, what wall? Does nature have on-time departures? The flood and its natural acuity. In terms of the valley, I will wait in the water under the flood for Blue. The cow carcasses sip the surface and sink like caverns into the dam. I breathe more than I thought. Endlessly, this mouthing, resides. When I drove us off the bluff we remained in Blue. The current, an often. Tracked blood. The community and the alignment—call thinking.

Tyler Flynn Dorholt is currently co-editor of the Columbia Poetry Review and publisher/editor of the recently launched Tammy. A recent chapbook, Dog the Man a Star, can be found at Scantily Clad Press. Current work appears in Action Yes, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Sub-lit, Quarterly West, Octopus, Zoland Poetry, and others.

 
 
 
 
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