Mark DuCharme

D E H S I N I F N U   E H T Today is porous with material I eat the future Its long legs encircle me, sometimes What will I say to tomorrow? My shorts are full of noise I can no longer hear this vanishing • The reversal of this image dreams a future which is already erased. Deflected into thunder which you cannot smoke. Where light grows irregular. There is a torsion under your lips which will not keep still. Cannot possibly bloom, until I see you in this light. For light insert night. An endlessness forged at stray edges of the tongue. The better to sing your name. • When I look into mirror, I am often somewhere Else. Days flew past When I look into mirror I am elsewhere, between Here & the edges of what sings • What sings is currently at a table It does not have much time      it flees this It flings this The shiny restlessness of cities ghosts this space It is a shiny cartography A jackpot foolishness     a residue Which the new implodes in cities while we wake • The light goes out behind the mirror Everything sings Which is unreflected Inflected on our tongues Our eyes reflect What does not b(l)ind us While we wait we are not sung to In the mirror which uncovers silence When the wind grows blank To be these instances where we don’t dream To uncover whispers under cities As the days grow long, & no one whispers A private landscape.      A subjective barrage

The Unfinished

The marvel at the side of a reference
Is all used up. We can disown its voice,
Its unkempt gardens. No one tells you to
Stop channeling the past,
You just decide to do it one day,
& It works. If you ride that
Particular train, a fly will enter
The car window & leave
By the opposite door. Does that
Smear of ink on your finger
Mark you
As an un-twentyfirst century
Poet? Rain today
Or grimy. The hand waves.
It is announcing its condition, by writing.
It is nothing more than a name,
A device that smells of musk.
Terrible. Wedged into summer.
Listen to the rains which strike. This is
No accident. For some
Who have considered leaving,
Now would be the time. It occurs
Frequently, & nothing pulls
It out of character. You
Cannot teach it; you cannot
Touch it; yet it is always
You.



Mark DuCharme's print books of poetry include The Sensory Cabinet (Blazevox Books, 2007), Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004), Cosmopolitan Tremble (Pavement Saw Press, 2002) and Answer (due in 2011 from Blazevox). The Found Titles Project was published electronically in 2009 by Ahadada. The latest of his many print chapbooks is The Crowd Poems (Potato Clock Editions, 2007). Other parts of The Unfinished have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Eleven Eleven, Eratio, New American Writing, Poets for Living Waters, Or, Pinstripe Fedora, Raft and Word for/Word. Still other work is recent in Vanitas and PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry). He lives, works in and teaches near Boulder, Colorado.
 
 
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