Andrew Cantrell


DUSK OF CLEARING

The room what's more    took on (what's) more    

Took on a darker and    it in its displacement    

In imagined disguises in    alluring glances    

In atmospheric rudiments    held a like or a double 

Hope alone of a desired    image along/among    

A daemon simultaneity of    influence and    

Standing by less lured than    barely bound by any   

One else    a diminished expression    (submerged) 

Disguising itself    costumed experience    accustomed

To root to thoughts    (dry rot in a dry room)    as it wills    

Despite hunger and    through sluggish bends    present or 

Pre-sent    the fickleness or    the indifference it has to have    

Involuntary to itself    to save an examined day:    difficult    

Long    frequent




STARS AND SLANTING


Not lost but becoming    although also

Of being or tense    this translation 

Itself a mannequin sense    immensely longer

Immediately and lingering    still strewn upon 

The present minutes    like the last

How it has that    increase of the new    How 

It longer rather believes    alone along    a mile or less 

Across a relief unannounced    and especially 

                [Despite anything of new concerning now]

To us    who are actually or    (as before)    gladly

And painfully no    longer ourselves    among years    no

stronger alike or    our selves at all    Our sculptural 

Life-like contemplation    time-like    of this experience    

Of a minute longer    is no longer forsaken in instants 

No longer hostile    if nonetheless    not elated




EXTENSION WAS A RIDDLE


Compared by    exotic passages    

                [satanic]    [accidentally] 

Motion before the    next breath    left 

Beneath the quick    the thick glance    

This dosage    depressive    of this yielding

And across an/d entirely spatial itself    

And they themselves    formulated    they 

Themselves certain of    already perceived 

Moments    now come to hand    and to any 

Number of things    a climax underlying 

This    radically    exclusively    immediately    

Is nonetheless    a confirmation    a doubt    a 

Sense    quiet    amiable    that here    that (any 

how)    There's an adapting    profoundly more   

To recall    entirely spatial themselves    already 

Perceived moments.




PROXIMITY


Passages haunt tones    of although glowing

Of although oneself    or an operation

                [In one play    a double possibility]

A noteworthy    a proximity

To a first difficulty    to a relation 

                [Certainly it's somewhere]

To that insensibly    endlessly intensified 

immensity    that's yet    to be lost    or 

With displacement    to be seated    Or in 

Traveling    its motion a feeling    first out of 

This yielding to    An elated or an elevated doubt    

Within    mental    a suspension    within ornamental    

A proximity    to our first    to our difficult    relation




HUSKS THE HUSH


A factory for sense   for a murder    banal 

And hardly    self-absorbed    (still)    a certain 

Friendliness or    altogether a silence between 

One and another    Just as first    just as restive

A memory of oneself    arrested in    well-known 

Figures    forms gently in figures forming    

constellations    and in suddenly    and in still gently    

A sensation    now perceived    now understood    

Now abrupt from    ages which had    first perceived - 

I said to myself – really, I seconded it – as that duration 

Once meant to    be    subject to    (everything)   to a 

Sunken    to a far-away-from-coming    factory    for sense

Andrew Cantrell has recent work appearing or forthcoming in SPECS, Arsenic Lobster, Beecher's Magazine, Emergency INDEX, Heavy Feather Review, Posit, Lana Turner, Upstairs at Duroc, AlteredScale, Pocket Litter, and Anomalous. He lives in Chicago where he works as a union organizer, does things with words, and co-curates PSA Projects, an itinerant, experimental screening series. He recently completed a residency in Literary Arts at the Banff Centre.
 
 
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