Mary Kasimor & Susan Lewis
futures near and far
Futures near and far puddle and swell.
Other animals swallow
the found present and initiate.
As in yeast they rise
without a need for yesterday.
With sentient tones of delphinium
all signs point to blind horizons
loaded with hope, faceted like
lives lived under pressure.
Their eyes retreat to the desert
and translate themselves into mime.
Ink lines are elegant
blocks of text like wine or
blood, jeweling claws.
No one can isolate the counterfeit
while the black texture streams
through wool embracing
the black tiered rain
and synesthesia opens arms
of amnesiac forsythia, stirring
spores in the lockjaw soil.
Pouring out its illness
of many-voiced ring tones
it recedes into a small novel
penned by a dance of options,
energy leading the charge.
No one has the last word.
loaded face pocketed
Loaded face pocketed
like iron, wrought and bothered.
Harried consumption coughing
up the opposition.
Pre-assembled and enabled panic.
Space splices through wires
composed as planetary combinations,
directed voices quivering in strata.
Have you mastered the sum of
your misplaced instincts?
How shall we orbit the others’
quavering lights?
Wolves insert their opinions,
an explanation of details to the descendants
lost in details. Dogs
shrink into cheap cuts of meat,
slinking into penitent tunnels.
The shame of lost appointments.
Open palms anointed with
divisive intentions.
The hands are thick with detergents
(nothing cleans off the surfaces).
Perfuming the food makes it inedible.
Bees huddle in futility
where the breach is born again.
A case of volatile myopia,
a job for all of us cowering
behind our philosophical veils.
Philosophy is in the stew
(it's also in the storm).
We are what we can't find.
Frugally we chew on the roots
of the last image leaking hope
for this stew of starts,
stopping to cogitate on our
holographic cuds.
The brain injury repairs
the remnants of the garden
as we eat to remove more words,
filling the glut with phantoms
masquerading as our betters,
gesturing towards oblivion,
hollowing us past the point
of plausible return.
roses flee into distance
Roses flee into distance
away from honey-eyed air
and hummingbirds' nectared breaths
and Apollo's external youth.
Their road worms through
feathers colliding with light.
No love lost or gained
resisting this filtered vision.
The feathers sleep restlessly
guarding night's anxiety.
In a circle we rest our hands,
dismembering the self's dimension.
The figmented thieving past
giving & taking connection,
our weave of touch sparkling
with tender vibrato petals.
In a fatal detail hidden
from its enthralled planet
earth lunges at Taurus
(Eden folds a note)
while Dante offers a branched
nod to our latest one-way errors
and the calving ice drowns
our caged sentience.
A blue wind with cold and shaken
luminosity leads us to the gate.
We absent ourselves from bodies,
hanging ourselves on dotted lines
leaning towards pollination
(the note speaks of progress
tickling the frugal tongue as
gravity dazzles the third eye).
The disemboweled garden waits
for wind-filled seeds non-gendered,
displayed. And what is not there
grows in bleeding fields,
spinning unanswered questions
from the exhausted soil until
Apollo resists bullying your beloved
and other petals dare to shine.
cold water erases the body
Cold water erases the body.
In blue I weep for the unforgotten,
laying my head in the river.
Stones lisp solvent process,
shedding edges to cool
communal curves.
My tongue hangs above my throat.
Food supplies thin strips of water
lost in the yeasty scriptures of thought.
Opacity at its most transparent
echoes the clamoring absence
of my spent selves.
Water is in the stone structure.
Sand reshapes Morse code from
a knife sharpening the rain.
Animals with gills engage
my psychic entrails, bathing my
yearning with abandon.
Before fluorescent tubing lit the way
the earth walked into the other ocean
and listened for the salt
while the waves drummed
a dark chorus of
battered attraction.
It lit itself on fire.
Something to sing about.
The guitar strings disguised as kelp.
The face of attachment
bridled by ruby droplets
of physical wisdom.
Diamonds fountain languor.
Visceral wrists and ankles
lost in the bleeding ocean.
Sanded memory of glass
cradling the eye in plastic tears,
reeling the song of the impartial current.
stealing the signs
stealing the signs of salvation casinos
nature sips blue oxygen/stitches the fire shut
bread beneath the overpass
birds eat the syncopated ultrasounds
reptiles dance away their heat
another gamble of wistful capital
masks transport identity
our rut is their command
they dance dainty
gamboling without aligning chance
here we stay within the lies
lucky us/while we compose our futures
meeting adversity at the intersection
of was and wish
barely lounging in our tenseless present
discontinued jaws snap up license
the required streamlined dictator
following you around in muted gray
a gristled command wrapped and ready
salivating computer codes/ordering a gin
diddling buttons of destruction
to harrow a furrow is to reap
some body’s blood-fruit
spent like ice in a glass
night hides between the sheep
counting the best futures for microchips
ships sail off seizing the flatlands/stalk
the details/are starred and burning in batik
the fabric of communion rends
our great night hope into another
stalemate of ocular dependence
crumbles into salted earth
Mary Kasimor has most recently been published in the following journals: Yew Journal, Big Bridge, Reconfigurations, Certain Circuits, MadHat, The Bakery, Horse Less Review, Altered Scale, Word For/Word, Posit, and The Missing Slate. She received a Fellowship from US Poets in Mexico for the 2011 Conference in Tulum, Mexico. She was guest editor of Truck (March 2013) and Altered Scale (Winter 2013). She has had several books of poetry published: Silk String Arias (BlazeVox Books), & Cruel Red (Otoliths Books), and The Windows Hallucinate (LRL Textile Series). She will have a new collection of poetry published in 2014, entitled The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books).
Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit. Her most recent books are How to be Another (Červená Barva Press, 2014), State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014), and This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], forthcoming in 2014). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in anthologies and journals such as The Awl, The Brooklyn Rail, Gargoyle, The New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Ping Pong, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, and Verse Daily. Her collaborative work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and performed in many venues, including Carnegie’s Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center.
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futures near and far
Futures near and far puddle and swell.
Other animals swallow
the found present and initiate.
As in yeast they rise
without a need for yesterday.
With sentient tones of delphinium
all signs point to blind horizons
loaded with hope, faceted like
lives lived under pressure.
Their eyes retreat to the desert
and translate themselves into mime.
Ink lines are elegant
blocks of text like wine or
blood, jeweling claws.
No one can isolate the counterfeit
while the black texture streams
through wool embracing
the black tiered rain
and synesthesia opens arms
of amnesiac forsythia, stirring
spores in the lockjaw soil.
Pouring out its illness
of many-voiced ring tones
it recedes into a small novel
penned by a dance of options,
energy leading the charge.
No one has the last word.
loaded face pocketed
Loaded face pocketed
like iron, wrought and bothered.
Harried consumption coughing
up the opposition.
Pre-assembled and enabled panic.
Space splices through wires
composed as planetary combinations,
directed voices quivering in strata.
Have you mastered the sum of
your misplaced instincts?
How shall we orbit the others’
quavering lights?
Wolves insert their opinions,
an explanation of details to the descendants
lost in details. Dogs
shrink into cheap cuts of meat,
slinking into penitent tunnels.
The shame of lost appointments.
Open palms anointed with
divisive intentions.
The hands are thick with detergents
(nothing cleans off the surfaces).
Perfuming the food makes it inedible.
Bees huddle in futility
where the breach is born again.
A case of volatile myopia,
a job for all of us cowering
behind our philosophical veils.
Philosophy is in the stew
(it's also in the storm).
We are what we can't find.
Frugally we chew on the roots
of the last image leaking hope
for this stew of starts,
stopping to cogitate on our
holographic cuds.
The brain injury repairs
the remnants of the garden
as we eat to remove more words,
filling the glut with phantoms
masquerading as our betters,
gesturing towards oblivion,
hollowing us past the point
of plausible return.
roses flee into distance
Roses flee into distance
away from honey-eyed air
and hummingbirds' nectared breaths
and Apollo's external youth.
Their road worms through
feathers colliding with light.
No love lost or gained
resisting this filtered vision.
The feathers sleep restlessly
guarding night's anxiety.
In a circle we rest our hands,
dismembering the self's dimension.
The figmented thieving past
giving & taking connection,
our weave of touch sparkling
with tender vibrato petals.
In a fatal detail hidden
from its enthralled planet
earth lunges at Taurus
(Eden folds a note)
while Dante offers a branched
nod to our latest one-way errors
and the calving ice drowns
our caged sentience.
A blue wind with cold and shaken
luminosity leads us to the gate.
We absent ourselves from bodies,
hanging ourselves on dotted lines
leaning towards pollination
(the note speaks of progress
tickling the frugal tongue as
gravity dazzles the third eye).
The disemboweled garden waits
for wind-filled seeds non-gendered,
displayed. And what is not there
grows in bleeding fields,
spinning unanswered questions
from the exhausted soil until
Apollo resists bullying your beloved
and other petals dare to shine.
cold water erases the body
Cold water erases the body.
In blue I weep for the unforgotten,
laying my head in the river.
Stones lisp solvent process,
shedding edges to cool
communal curves.
My tongue hangs above my throat.
Food supplies thin strips of water
lost in the yeasty scriptures of thought.
Opacity at its most transparent
echoes the clamoring absence
of my spent selves.
Water is in the stone structure.
Sand reshapes Morse code from
a knife sharpening the rain.
Animals with gills engage
my psychic entrails, bathing my
yearning with abandon.
Before fluorescent tubing lit the way
the earth walked into the other ocean
and listened for the salt
while the waves drummed
a dark chorus of
battered attraction.
It lit itself on fire.
Something to sing about.
The guitar strings disguised as kelp.
The face of attachment
bridled by ruby droplets
of physical wisdom.
Diamonds fountain languor.
Visceral wrists and ankles
lost in the bleeding ocean.
Sanded memory of glass
cradling the eye in plastic tears,
reeling the song of the impartial current.
stealing the signs
stealing the signs of salvation casinos
nature sips blue oxygen/stitches the fire shut
bread beneath the overpass
birds eat the syncopated ultrasounds
reptiles dance away their heat
another gamble of wistful capital
masks transport identity
our rut is their command
they dance dainty
gamboling without aligning chance
here we stay within the lies
lucky us/while we compose our futures
meeting adversity at the intersection
of was and wish
barely lounging in our tenseless present
discontinued jaws snap up license
the required streamlined dictator
following you around in muted gray
a gristled command wrapped and ready
salivating computer codes/ordering a gin
diddling buttons of destruction
to harrow a furrow is to reap
some body’s blood-fruit
spent like ice in a glass
night hides between the sheep
counting the best futures for microchips
ships sail off seizing the flatlands/stalk
the details/are starred and burning in batik
the fabric of communion rends
our great night hope into another
stalemate of ocular dependence
crumbles into salted earth
Mary Kasimor has most recently been published in the following journals: Yew Journal, Big Bridge, Reconfigurations, Certain Circuits, MadHat, The Bakery, Horse Less Review, Altered Scale, Word For/Word, Posit, and The Missing Slate. She received a Fellowship from US Poets in Mexico for the 2011 Conference in Tulum, Mexico. She was guest editor of Truck (March 2013) and Altered Scale (Winter 2013). She has had several books of poetry published: Silk String Arias (BlazeVox Books), & Cruel Red (Otoliths Books), and The Windows Hallucinate (LRL Textile Series). She will have a new collection of poetry published in 2014, entitled The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books).
Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit. Her most recent books are How to be Another (Červená Barva Press, 2014), State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014), and This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], forthcoming in 2014). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in anthologies and journals such as The Awl, The Brooklyn Rail, Gargoyle, The New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Ping Pong, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, and Verse Daily. Her collaborative work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and performed in many venues, including Carnegie’s Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center.
posted by mark young at 12:10 PM
1 Comments:
Wow! Vibrant images! Great control of breath! Some fantastic poetry! Kudos girls!
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