Goatrooster Grotto
Goatrooster Grotto
The Furthest Point In The Forest
The furthest point in the forest
that you frequent with wings and desires
in the hour you undress, at random,
making good use of a sonnet's mysterious fog;
in the vestiges of the poem's ruins
you set up the door of your name
against the shadow substance, where you take refuge
in an inescapable moment and you are restrained,
my love is in these surroundings,
in the things that serve as borders for you
and the things that declare me guilty: sleepless love
at the margins of your body, that transforms
so much of everything I see into your image,
there until I fit inside of the future.
--Miguel Marvilla
tr. by Tim Kahl
Junk Human
- such a dark sky the November sky in March, she says,
- the universe's insurrectionist pigeon whirls in my skull a package
- of lights, she says, the branch will blossom, certainly, she says,
- the barbaric branch in the window, the white blossom, this coastline
- suddenly
- in the middle of the room, the TV screen, the firescreen on the horizon,
- out
- of the dark the firebird plunges into the handkercief of the baldachin,
that
- is not really March, she says, I am a March child and I know March
- exactly,
- there the sky is open, the crystal-hard air, but that is
- no March sky, she cries, the black silk bodies and women's
- umbrellas, they are draped
- about and without wind movement, the mist of the rain, dust-
- matter, dust-chatter
- in the eye in the flesh, the return of the flames, the violet glitter
in the
- east,
- the column of fire burning tapestries (oil), wintershowers
- on tap, the sky of Chernobyl ripped open, I say,
- or the black flag above the opera house, who died
- again, we
- cry as if out of a mouth, sincerely, an insincere audience, I
- say,
- musical mesages, dracaena trees, Chinese
- ladies' men, tiny little blondes
- a grave's cross free of snow in the park's grass : like an Easter hiding
place
- in childhood
- the variously colored and shaped little heaps
- of dog shit
- and above the meadow the human meadow the tour of Finnish saunas
- with naked feet / or running naked through the meadow leaving
- footprints of oil
- as I ran naked through the meadow, she cried, my hide
- smoked through with rain, all themes made taboo, I say,
- the cap slanted on the head, the elegantly patterned snow : the
- pair of daw's feet, the worn-out mesh of nerves, I say,
- the flight patterns in my head in the early morning, the phantom
- rocket trails, the rooster-colored fantasies,
- as if I were a smoked cuttlefish, junk human, then
- the sounds loosened from the sun, already the deep darkness
- in the morning,
- the iron horizon, she says, the man in the drain for example,
- the view of the snow chamber : the Pisano's
- feelings about flowers : the hypocritical art of memory, or whatever,
the
- disorganization in the eye, it looks like a windmill or something like
that
- or
- huskies from Oswald Wieners' inquiring perspective, it was
- a blood-red glimmer, a lock / lips in the first still-life shot
- of Ingrid Wieners' face growing fuller with swollen
- blood-red lips, the waving frayed blood-red tongue between
- the walls of the house and once in the haze of early spring the bizarre
- blurred church towers
- or the memory of a childhood perspective, like the baths
- in the the bathtub she was stamping her feet in order to be washed
/
- like
- sauerkraut or mash stamped with bare feet, while the big
- sister
- whips the bathtowel in the snow in front of the
- house, what
- is survival? what
- is an optical dream, sea-snow, oh
- I remember
- a mighty linden tree at the height of
- summer-
--Friederike Mayröcker
tr. by Tim Kahl
- The Pearl
-
- Write the word and seal it with your tongue,
- lichen to lichen, until your eyes
- roll back in your head to see
- the dark side of silence. Whites show
- nothing but white, still usual
- in its veined pallor. Oh speech of sight.
- The word is a pearl inside: the clam
- is still, invisible, and pure, like stone.
-
- The word is written and no one can read
- it, because eyes are gone and a trip
- inside is out of the question.
- So shove your foot forwards and purge yourself
- there, with glee. The broken shutters of a shell
- will cringe dully in your hand,
- and the pearl will bite you
- where the sun strikes it at any proper angle.
--Cynthia Davidson
Cynthia Davidson has published in OLD CROW, SNARK, ACM,
PRIVATE, LUCID STONE, SLIGHTLY WEST, POET'S EDGE, BLACK RIVER REVIEW, WIRE,
etc. She teaches at Univ. of Illinois-Chicago.
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© Copyright 1997 by Tim Kahl