c s carrier
THE MIND’S ORDINARY TASK
You spring from silence, unexpected, morning spooled
a clavicle, dropped of feeling voice. Drift bits of paper, stray wings,
rupture the sun arc, other end river,
before jigsawing the street. In your chest, are absent the organs, the ignored, the transformative, the myth suspended, the hermaphrodite, the changing ears & tiny hammers, epithets,
cubicles, into hands air.
Your fingernails, swinging hinges, click asphalt, leave skin upside, down without snow, life insurance.
Devouring seams that shut my jaw, electronic key card entries,
you, a surprise form, shade gates, collection souvenirs.
Concrete shockwaves every floor in relation the foil trusses.
The day island's burned, edged with time machine,
managed by a new century songbird.
From my room, all outlines.
Lizards taped to windows,
where cracks form a formed, space in an acorn, story of a bear climbing Devil's Tower to have its tail whacked off, piece of amethyst,
typewriter,
bunny eared girl karatekicking teeth; fingerpuppet rituals; privateparking; lilac growing from an old man palm; wax drippings; two chimneys; cleats; BMW's & Volvos; mermaid untethered in red canoe, complicit breaking her crown; elephantheaded
standing guard the doorway to a futon.
Tearing at pretzelvendors your micabeak, in the driveway, peacocking tail coverts, your bluegreen garland, bravura with eyes painted on.
Shimmers your back velvet, a spine of armorplate cataclysm,
scrawk in the rafters trees, the flowerbox geraniums.
I won't lose sleep a while over listmaking. I won't sleep
a while.
Dressed in blue panoply, you, paroxysm, without sweat or salt, your makeup
harbor's glass, glitter, hat with daisy.
Rats flee forefather tombs, through babystrollers, sewergrates' iron throats, shoelaces, backs of knees, divorcepetitions.
The spaces between toes where they don't belong.
I carry breath in a little jar, You carry it through pigeons, lips & bones, metallurgy, cloud holes,
a woman's hair & combing.
The sidewalk overshines, a bridge green with daylight.
Everywhere modem teeth, your fangle, rhetoric, futuristic garb, dear antiplumage. The unreal handbook, buried fingerprint gray. Hypesthesia.
Because you step on a papercup, words, bell struck. A museum's shudder, the stage ghosttowned. Ten thousand newborns,
crying cold, & whoever has a mother prays to her reckless.
Because you reflect in officesuites, currencyporters throw their hands. Gold bouillon shrouded in basements, splotches.
Automotiveplants shut down, nuclearreactors interrogating
nervous pitches. Deep fields, oilrefineries.
Helicopters with scissors lasso my scalp.
Boxcars shush themselves in garages.
Marchingbands lose adrenaline to loudness, lines undressed slip.
Nurses conundrum bones filed smooth.
Stainedglass voiceless even while wringing light. How faith happens
in the bar where I with TV.
Your ballerina muscular thighs carry
avantgarde choreography
hypnosis imagination, costumed in ghost regalia, arabesque
grand jetees that move sky above rivers & interstates,
that move sky's untuned geometry, necklace, certain light locked at the foot's ellipsis.
Striking my captivated agape, your skulls' ocular cavities pinch the stomach, epiduraled with unbefore heliums, virtue reduced to cartography, yellow angels. Mauled by uninvented nomenclature.
Could've gone these years not seeing your bangle
anklets, pandora chintz.
There's no way to me talk linguaschematic.
I scar above the mouth, couldn't see until today. I keep coming back your Penelope weave,
the city thrown your shoulder.
cscarrier
lives in Amherst, MA, and teaches at the University of
Hartford in West Hartford, CT. His poems
have appeared in Coconut and Aught. A short collection, The 16s, was recently published by Katalanche Press.
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