Gap Gardening Read online

  water seems to rise black and insistent

  boats take off

  lights grow small

  talk

  is so difficult

  two pairs of eyes

  see

  two different initial

  questions too

  disappear

  as in a dream

  the body

  thinks against itself

  No slush across the page yet

  “my” words

  drop of the Allegheny when

  the Ohio takes it

  the mask of context evaporates

  in a mild winter

  the spectacle is elsewhere

  I need a book to say

  I love you

  the curtain goes up on

  your face

  turns toward me on the pillow

  contracts and crossfades

  into your other larger

  dilated pupils no longer search

  across the impersonal

  meaning there’s nothing

  my body hides that

  you don’t know about

  As if nothing had

  started yet

  energy of beginning pushes toward

  my life ahead somewhere

  interval difficult

  to close no matter

  how I curve

  the questions I

  live in are always too big

  I’m not talking about

  violent wind blows the mind empty

  new beginnings nor our

  walking toward where our horizons

  for an instant

  overlap but where

  I could get into my story

  the road catches

  up with itself and I’ll

  be where I haven’t left

  the road is everywhere,

  or stop this body

  Exaggeration of a curve

  exchanges

  time and again

  beside you in the car

  pieces the road together

  with night moisture

  the force of would-be sleep

  beats through our bodies

  denied their liquid depth

  toward the always dangerous next

  dawn bleeds its sequence of ready signs

  a question of

  no just a cigarette frays

  analogies out of

  too frequent a departure

  leaves only an ash

  of memory itches for words

  in my mouth won’t be born into

  tranparency no longer open

  before me

  accelerates

  into solid illusion

  so I try to shift or at least

  talk

  the road comes back to the surface

  in spite of the cigarette

  licks my lips

  two horns

  and a field blown with

  wildflowers withdraw

  (gesture?) I don’t

  like the car herds move through our caves

  and the life I thought mine passes

  by an inch

  the extreme tips of

  my expectations

  time’s skin shrinks under

  these 2000 pounds of metal

  knot villages and fields and

  rivers into repetition

  explodes

  eyeballs windshields

  onto a distance

  slopes off the air

  around nerve lost

  would make

  crash across

  my weight

  still untransparent

  in beat with the explosions

  not talked about

  deafen

  can I add more than

  100 simultaneous miles of

  presence every

  day shifts unceasingly

  parallel bodies

  obliquely conscious of

  larger and larger blue or grey slabs of air

  squeeze through the ventilator

  widen the angle of

  my look digests field

  after field of the “world”

  till my eyes fat as butter bloat

  outlines

  into threshold

  smell of fresh grass sails through

  the years harden

  between you and

  your language shields (you thought) against time’s

  arrows pierce the lungs of

  some giant faceless beast with

  missing eyes beyond

  the range of

  pronouns snare us centaurs

  half car half man

  and what you took for granted

  rises from the wrong end

  of a sentence and from then on

  it’s

  after

  through the slums of possibles

  batteries plunged in their own

  acid erodes the

  consonants cut in on vowels

  before they can fade in

  the air makes way for illusion of depth

  streaks the (possible)

  spectator into grey blur of

  a squirrel?

  disguises

  the lack of more than

  two dimensions

  roar into view

  the difference between here and

  here “simple” extension

  rushes into

  the blare of a horn

  would rip the air accompanies

  the tissue of pleasure inside

  pleasure

  the ground swells the

  double sheet of the

  way back of

  the outside rises up

  into the bright blue sky

  off balance

  now a different economy would

  balance

  never happens without words

  spill down into

  the levels in between

  my sex and the beginning

  of a cycle skin signs and

  obliterates in

  the same tumescence

  carries the words across

  my very blood

  rolls through the pages toward

  void suddenly of our language

  a light

  flows like ink

  for Otto Graf

  curve

  of a present perfect twisted

  might

  continue backward beyond

  the “point”

  belongs to no one

  is as fuzzy as

  beginnings recede to

  deeper lairs

  won’t fossilize the embryo “we

  have never had”

  an edge on passage

  steams up my corvair’s window

  and something

  doesn’t get said

  cars simulate

  the ambiguity of stone with

  compact outsides

  cave

  into hollows

  our rites abolish

  distance as tombs were thought to

  but metals conduct faster

  and without decay

  opaque vibrations from old immobility

  amplify

  the constant small change

  in our cells

  behind your

  eyes on the ambush of interest

  unravels this rolling system of

  diminishing utility in
vents

  new happinesses

  in time intensity and mostly

  prices bridle the movement

  as gravity (“just

  the right amount” he said) would pull

  your impulse down to

  metal ploughs deeper

  into a sharper space

  the rapid shift into a

  probes the viole(n)t sky

  oscillating

  between middletown connecticut and

  providence rhode island

  the always open

  circulation grows with the prices

  train the eye on

  opaque metal

  the slower language of

  dust softens the horizon

  recedes no farther

  than shifts in the spectrum

  the waves

  the blue bodiless shock of the air

  200 miles of nerve per hour with the guardrails down

  can churn the intermittent

  shapes into sheer

  bodies touch there’s no

  question why

  my tongue on your

  speed leaps ahead of

  he will come on a stallion

  he will come on the power and

  fury of wind races

  out beyond calculating the

  of soil of labor of investments into

  the warp toward a dimension

  we don’t yet have

  opens layer after

  layer pushes past speech

  for Charles Hine

  halfway between false exit

  and spectators swarm up

  into the old texts strut out

  of our crystal ball

  as if the future had to be

  remembered words

  as in a prison

  when head-on into

  speed

  is the evidence

  we have prepared

  from sperm and egg

  to spring into the muscled current

  sweeps through

  roads connect all tongues

  locked into my own momentum

  could bang bone

  against bone but just

  shoots by the

  busy and deroute me in

  changing relays

  the future works complexities into

  my optical concessions

  blend real surfaces

  with the illusion of

  deep space and solid

  paper consumes

  all representation back

  into force and field

  it’s not enough to think to see

  shock of the “outside” at our

  fingertips

  radiate a cone of attention

  through the steering wheel out into

  points of space my body

  haunts from inside

  the “world” is not ahead where I’m

  launched into the gap

  of mind ahead of body

  widens with the metal lining of

  my skin

  flaunts its refusal

  to harden into

  durability

  the signs

  of course I want this sequence

  won’t get me out I

  participate in spite

  of me

  if I look back

  there’s no trace

  of my passage

  no improbable footprint

  or tire mark

  sitting in my own obstacle

  eyes open on

  the constant disappearing

  translating

  one measurement

  into another

  when they have senses

  The Senses Barely,

  or The Necessities of Life

  for Sophie Hawkes

  I (Weapons)

  doubled corners

  of the situation

  the words duped by this dialectic

  know

  the pose of “brushing against”

  insistence

  on detail

  severe eyelashes

  the weapons must

  be kept in order

  (take the

  game

  of courtesy

  of charm)

  her knees crossed

  over the manner of

  his undressing her

  a chord

  (deceptively resonant)

  a strength of image

  but scanty provisions interrupt

  her concern for doors

  into sleep

  focuses

  the story can be carried in two hands

  finale:

  I have turned on

  with shifting strands

  of light

  II (Pursuit)

  “I have turned on,

  with sifting hands,

  the light”

  which in rehearsal

  of place

  he (I fear) resorts to trapping

  or sits where atmosphere

  exhausts the drifting ice

  and the other inconsistencies

  sits still in the slant

  lays in stores

  her skin

  the bare necessities of life

  (blurred crash

  picks up a chair

  a flash bulb stays

  the position of the group)

  distance

  follows the slow argument

  the pursuit of game

  held back by the sleeve

  untangled

  a statue of Washington

  of songs

  of burdens

  of

  cannibal spirits

  do violence to words

  III (The Closing)

  they have no street in their hurry

  but leave with the cold

  and few household goods

  a body of pure salt

  stationary abode

  preceded

  by repetition

  by empty bottles

  the time it takes

  to mix

  the male and female

  matter

  none of the steps may be

  omitted

  changes into

  unrecognizable

  straight lines

  “she was with him”

  the day after

  in relative order

  whereas

  the necessary eye

  of the sun

  overgrows

  The Senses Wolgamotly,

  or There Were Men and Women

  I (His Initiative)

  duped by the curve

  the living tickle of revenge

  of which a geometric cunning

  changes wives

  institutes trouble

  the angle or how to

  avoid it

  I picked up and

  to which

  curiosity did

  he sell her

  now that secrecy seems

  irresistible

  the crawling street

  curb lined with bicycles

  experience (hive)

  determines the doubt of the visit

  the pleasure whose

  repetition also

  humiliates

  smell of food

  the execution

  believed liquid

  perplexed

  II (His Method)

/>   whose humiliation he had

  witnessed

  he throws himself

  into the law, the book, and thus

  attracted

  he figures a supple equation

  in the eyes of his mistress

  fake wishes (possible?)

  responsible to circumstance

  owed, that is, the

  juridical paradox

  sliced

  her appeal deepens in his eyes

  III (Retrospective)

  this rehearsal is also

  in the attitude

  the fragrance of it

  choked me

  which cautions against contraries

  the roles

  that of the nape

  in his first wife

  her melancholy breath

  generous, our haste,

  my knees

  do I lose the common torment

  does he turn

  whose manner to living

  which

  takes old conceptions like

  “horses stiffened with priapic fury”

  for me

  this is betrayal

  or homage

  IV (His Greed)

  food

  reconciles his frame

  he put my thumb in my mouth

  or his, perhaps, supple

  so many jaws

  pretends

  because he can’t cut the corner

  of the mere thought of a meal

  hefty

  and only usual

  nothing has changed

  A sort of empty number

  relations

  never more present

  all you

  around you

  let yourself

  it moves but that’s my fault

  yes yes you said across the words

  _____

  When did you

  what a funny

  he didn’t anywhere

  that is he lived and before

  he found then why with you

  he seemed and he

  could stand the center of

  to his surprise

  more than she ever

  awakened a distance with

  _____

  The pressure not to live in

  but streets and incessant

  we’re not

  not really

  would we accept

  alone

  to be not altogether

  Parallel open so we could

  against one another

  turn

  you know there is

  between attention

  a place never direct

  nor an object to stay near

  impersonal attention you don’t with

  extreme

  _____

  Latent agreement not to