Lisa Samuels


On the Level

                                              Wakeful

Break, came with an arms, the head gentle tiering
bookish, serene as automobiles through the wind

cam ready to fish, ready to tear out the holes
in the body so as to clean the body

we’re hungry, we agree on it we are invisid
reachful, arming for the hole in the building

through which we pass, nuggets in our grasp
holding them for food having scraped

of the clearance we give to the child showing him
datives, explorational giving, the little kittens like

fish, we are ready to fish in the thick wet air
we have the little bodies of the eatables

the fine eyes of the



                                                             Mid-day

the stream on leaves, giving off ideas without vetting them
through, she will judge on this one, he disappr

the vengeful aspects are treatable, little round face of the child who will be subject

venture, the hammering enclave built in
the forest having been deprived of its central plateau
which hovers above in a diving execution of geological haptics

proven through the groove times of the plank set, we’re for them
afterward telling, in the bottom room of the tor

we’re telling them and it sifts up to the top, the tor belt
hitting their motives like the belt flicking cold on hot

the tor belt car seat on which the little round child sits
ready venturing, the round wind fat on the hamper through
the air that cuts straight haggles through, his eyes

treat on me, treat on me haggle mana, straight
through the clasp of tor, straight in the hamper
we sit inside the



night

the bodies are sleeping, the air sifts through its hasps are rounded car sweeps, are calm dies flicked through ramparts the coming through of cluster magnets the bits clump here in tufts the air spreads out the air wanders in the corner feels the feathery might temperature the air wanders through across your eyelids sleepering brush brush the air brushes you sleeping the air whirls away again plundered in the middle with cakes and magnet honey, come cluster here magnet honey, this thicket’s nice with what we’ll ever

Unfamiliar dog

wrestling on the mat
dialog in hand, he barks
the manual waiting to hear
he barks and the mat
lists

liaison perking up in mask she
perks up to the ask
and tells the chain heft
drawn and louche
her ply a square floor
plough is stuff enough

for books and plea
a wonky managed filler
for the set blast take
off something huffing just
for you if life is
crew enough

if bark, the pat soft
placate deck
waiting for whose dialog
with figures
stick



Bend

Your legs are painful from the fruit your eyes dry from it
so tell me are you rueful as you make out
are you making out with the cold metal
of the girl lying down below the jacket
on the cold sand cold from the night the crabs
come running to the invitation party to the beach
dark invisible from people gone the surface
of the scurrying earth dark with movement
surface parturitioned with merchandise
people smiling with teeth bare and blazing
the malnutrition of the beach bare with blazing
the sun blazed out with a person waiting, waiting
for you to be done you’re done you’re
finished fished you have scraped it all
out of you at last you are fishless you are finished
the sand bare of crabs
the street bare of cars or legs
the walking brain inserted back into the head
you are bent from the stick you are bent from
the canister you are inserted into the canister
of your bent legs back again into the intended
stream against which your legs rolled, the waves
of comprehension tensile in your flat decanted
in the breakers of your limbs and back
again your eyes promising outward to
a someone blank complaining of your hours
you’re allotted you’re a lot to take in
you are a lot on the ground of the earth a plot
inside your ear an assemblage constant to yourself
a little story to tell a story to keep you fed
in your mind inside there totally silent inside there
telling yourself the blanket or the cave, the spread-out
story of the anthropods who’re doing it, sane as mice,
sane as hospitals, the arms stretching slowly out
to grace you with the Plans of Gently Doing It,
the slow settling down of the barter, the exchange
we give each other eating with our eyeball teeth
come smiling to stop what you are doing
now from want to make a worker in the world
you take and give and breathe and in collapsing
on the grass at last you bend



Binary kiss

Of echo tacitly inclined
Of outset raintree we
The wiry bounding line remained
So kiss, so roundtree flatten out
Yourself a kine of earthly substantives
Amiss apart from concrete blocks
You’re wearing on your head
Avoid me now
Simmer on the premise multiple
Slams of industry coming for you
Waiting in the sardors
Flat inside shadow we press
Ourselves nomenclature durable
Ourselves a premise opened for
A moment of incline upon
Which we slope

Defensively, the elevator
Doors coming apart to cleanse
Us now, the selfsame pickets
We hold our eyes to keep them open
Fairytime at the last, the singular
Admission holding the doors open
For perdurable ingress
Has besotted you imposture
Drift, the flake of admonition
Which you wash with a smile scraped
Across your cheek a speaking
Wince, a fine agon of airy
Multiplicity astew, your facile
Nondeterminants, sprecking
For a breath, holding the invisible door
Open a moment, longer



Lisa Samuels lives in New Zealand and teaches at The University of Auckland. Her newest poetry books are Mama Mortality Corridos (Holloway Press, 2010) and Gender City (Shearsman Books, 2011); a book of omitted prose, Anti M, will be published later this year by Chax Press.
 
 
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