Month: March 2015

Poem 159

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Fallen Out

But of course it didn’t

It’s just the decay of time;

Things will get broken

People came back, hundreds even

Picked up their tinderboxes and

Filled their pantries and lived

There in the shadow of the mountain

And felt no sweeping graces, touched

Every brick in their homes and knew

No simpler word for god than power

In their wax shoes          the wrong size

Poking holes in the mud and

Watching them fill with water

Or bugs or radiation. Sometimes

Calculations won’t tell you everything

Sometimes there are uneque circumstances

We witness with wide open shoulders

Catch the moment in out chest

And beat it to death with our single-hearts

And we tried it again and again and it

Was never the same as the first time…

We were safe, then

No simpler word for god than power

—ECW

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Poem 158

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bedside

I want to pull it out of you

the parts inside that make you sick

the ever-ache that makes you sick

the part of you that makes you sick

and I know it will be messy

but I want it all           out

every piece, in a slender string

I am certain, in taking the corner

it will come to me          a ribbon,

a folding coil… be gone

I want it all       out

the part of you that makes you sick

but it is your body

with its teeth                 turned inside

out! The parts of you that are crooked

and strange, the parts that would harm

I’d pull them out with my cleanest hands

and heal you whole

and heal your soul.

—ECW

Poem 153

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bibliogrand

When pricing antiquarian books
one falls haplessly in love with them
the angle of their indexes
the seductive bending spine
assured – certainly – that the value
of this humble bind is glacial
oh, those corners, character!
and that crease, delight!
light underlining on page eighty-six
a book this old will show some signs
of heavy reading,
perspiring fingers
baited breath—a book
this wise—tantamount to fortunes
sits neatly on my shelf, waiting
for a price and a buyer, oh no
I would never embarrass you with
slim figures, you deserve another decimal…
this quizzical whim, a leather bound
bombshell with notches and gilt, I am
toying with the book ribbon – inappropriately
and running my hand along the title page –
forgive me, this feels like a stolen moment
with a novel I could never afford
signed by both authors; unclipped
being its warden, for now, before
it falls into someone else’s library
to be read again,
or displayed.
—ECW

Poem 152

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for my dear friend in a world made of paper. best of luck.

twenty less pounds

Don’t take my hunger

Fill me instead with fistfuls

Of soil, make me fragrant

Weigh my body with earthsod

But make me weightless

Trim my waistline—beautiful in

The space that I am empty

Make me ephemeral

When I move, know my shadows

Take my longing, but please

Leave the hunger, the will to eat

Handfulls of petals like a reptile

Make me scale-less—take the lines

Of my skin and smooth me slowly

Like a topsheet—on a freshbed in

the evening:make the light from the street

cars seem organic, make it whiter,

with the glow of my new skin,

fill my pockets full of happiness

make it opium: sleep addictive,

wake me when I’m famous,

and the whole world knows my

loveliness—knows my nose bridge

but not my heritage, and the heart

beat of my lover is a whisper

I invented to cure the silence

Make him incredible but not so

Impossible that I never know him,

make my night-dress something hapless

that I untie with my dosage

and remember I was young once,

young and hungry—don’t take my hunger

just fill me up and sew me tighter

make me thin.

—ECW

Poem 151

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a poem for my love which has yet to present a title:

I popped your epiphany

in my mouth—for safe keeping

I didn’t want to loose it

so I spoke it every moment

you were away//such a long while

oh cannibal—nibbling you loose

with my tongue\\when simply we dis

solved one onto the other

I touched my thumb to each of my

fingers to prove I was awake and you

said over and over that we would never

come apart now—not now not ever—but I

had known that all along.

—ECW

Poem 150

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tempstate

I set my life on casters

intent on leaving,  certain

I would soon be gone

this resting ground, meant

only to slow the heavy inevitable

but I was stayed/weighed

by my own lovely fears

of moving, now that I had stopped

ah what trouble to begin again

my own limbs so clumbsy—

hapless with wheels and I

so wooden with apathy

the stubborn barbing of my soul

exchanging flecks of essence

with the things I hoped to waive

and the hollow carved from wandering

was at once a pleasant whole.

—ECW

Poem 149

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ocularmigraine

Bell hook curious—the kind that

time to wake up now

wonders over itself envelopes

time to wake up now

and sleeps on its hands

time to wake up (now)

with hollow glass epitaphs

the kind that (wake up!)

catch the light in symphony

—and hold fast color—

in a lidded jar. (wake up!)

I watched the every-strand

form and unfold in tandem

both eyes open saw myself dream

—ECW