20170425

Jared Pearce



All the Stars
                a television debate across time and space

You’ve got three lives—you want
to ask the audience? Time does
not exist as a single universe, as

three? You went on a blind date and that night
THAT NIGHT you got married? Traveling backwards
through time one arrives generally

in a different universe from ours.
Any bells goin’ off? Quantum gravity:
a unified theory of all time and space.

Oh, the way Glenn Miller played—
that would be bee. He got really disturbed
because Stephen is a defender

of the establishment, but we’re happy
she decided to walk away. The explosion
would probably destroy the time machine.

I don’t think I’ve ever said,
memorandum, I’ve always said (pointing),
memo. I do not see a way to make time

travel possible. No deliberation, no gnashing
of teeth. There will be someday time travel,
I believe we will know in ten to fifteen years.

A lovely lady; they seem to be always
ready. Suppose I have two mouths,
two wormholes to nosh,

to eat. Is that your final
answer? I can’t reject time machines;
my opponent might have seen the future and knows the answer.



The Tigers

An essential loneliness, diet
and grooming—an approach is needed for this:
like that through tall grasses. There
is a pitch, some shade, plexiglass,
a lifelong mate still burning like Dax
before the game, headphones, wilderness
of deserts and islands of extinction, execution
all about the eyes. He could jump and crack
a striker’s head, bent awkward at the neck.

Ruben will regard the shadows
beneath the glare, leap
for a chance of what is there.

Inside are black spheres for prance and play:
the dance of counter-attack and creating
space, beat the man, cut, pass along
the margins and cross. Bury the trophy,
cover the man for a midnight
snack—survival may depend on the shade

at half time. Ruben calls, Ese tigre
platónico, and they all are:
Ruben and Dax, the keepers, Tigers
spinning in their cage. This
football cup over turned to dry,
let everything drip down
the inside, the attic bones
of the chest, carrion bits.

The cool shadows the players rest
in, Dax’s head rings like a cave, like he can run
all day long again; Ruben sits
on a ball, restless on the stones of existence: Pienso
en un tigre. As true as Dax’s eye
and loose teeth.



Six Weeks

Breasts perfect and unfathomable                 If Jesus came home he would be unable to say
as cantaloupe, form and content:             how to get another to read
presence realized by the infant’s             one’s mind, the mysterious codes of body
suck: a connection, an absence that makes             out as black petals, layered as vulva.
room for essence: as close as love                       
and instinct and language can fold           Jesus never had a son to tuck
one to one to one.           in pacifier and nursery fables, never
the triangle of child, time and desire, of distinct
Borders.  It’s degrading to command           borders. He fulfilled laws, snuffed
sexuality which has its own          desires of every angle. Could he comfort one
meaning and language,        who recalls where her breasts and ribs meet?
                  and in the fifth week                         
I understand, I allow      There are various Edens, sometimes rotting
the text and reader because I am     fruits. The crossfire of command and yearning,
not proud, I’m reliving the scenes    mingling singularity, such is only for us
of desire—success and failure, to administer, to figure: How to
communicate a giving?




Jared Pearce lives in an old house in Iowa, USA, full of mice, bats, guitars, and boys. His family points out that sometimes his poems are like real poems.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page
 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home