C.
S. Carrier
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4 poems -
Aggressionocracy
Garlic invades my apple. Thighs pubesce, they stomp up &
down the stairs,
cursing faucets, rattling suitcases, crying the whole time for
bonechina &
silver creamers. I try to stay myself but the livingroom’s
claustrophobia
machetes me fundamentally. Yellow & lavender, sweet disciplinarians,
carry
ancestors & their photographs inside denied figs, their
intercostals
indifferent to desert migrations, red robes, indifferent to
cut tongues, the
violence of concrete. Calves come down from the mountains to
be smeared on
rocks. I build ambrosia & stenotypes without the river.
The sun disintegrates,
the door can’t muffle blood, the coffeetable’s 32bit
playground. Birds forget
radar to deliver food to. A yellowjacket, its head lopped off
by imminent
death, infiltrating the periphery. A voice with diamond stirrups
pestles
together glycerin & a flag & a plumbline, it says my
duty is to allow the paste
to penetrate my beveled armpits. I’m not to float above
the neck, praying for
shrapnelfree life or wrestling serenades. Tornados see only
themselves, they go
about circling their neighbors’ sandbox. Roads’
cities go where tents once
stood. Water to be drilled presses fiberglass, to carbondate
books, claw the
surname, its inheritance, its inherent status. Last Halloween’s
jackolanterns,
freed from their tombs, turn to paper & all around sprouts
newly spectered
razorwire. White ears plummet through elaborate baskets, unable
to believe in
their pastel eggs.
Daytonadescended
We between Halltop & East Fork, delapidations where Grandpas
were born
We the old republic, glasspack exhaust, drafting, anonymous,
highschoolfaced
We with orangestruts, 2” lift, knobbytired, eyebrow salute,
posture our necks
We at Shoney’s nightowl breakfastbar, celebrating over
gravy & bacon & grits
We Wranglerized, Chippewacalved, snakeskin imitations, Earnhardtcapped
We rust, Bond-O fendered, rearspoilered, Enkeirimmed, neon groundeffects
We plaza, the Sky City’s first Pac-Man, Camelot Cinema’s
sidewalk batsignal
We mullet aficionados, windshield’s adhesive film, cartoons
piss white
fountains
We this Russ Ave artery, tires that sqawl, undigital, this existential
yippee-ki-ay
We in Camaros & Mustangs, pickups, Turtlewax, bumpers snapping
Jacks
We Kickers, isobaric bassrattled trunkthrob, consoleslouch,
leftarm autopilot
We mindsmokers, pitrow the Hot Spot, for Mountain Dew spitoons,
Fritos manna
We the infield, thronged, tailgate legswingers, parkinglot’s
styrocooler
speakeasy
We in traffic, blinkerlines, the MickeyDees hairpin, the jockey
back down
Threw Sphere
A blank clips black to mesh, a spike to the first finger.
Looking for some wrong greys the lakes.
I haven’t vibrated in 3 years.
I swallow the clock & leave its bones near the airport
to terrify gaps that
look down.
Horses gallop across green boxes.
My signatures & lakes & billows manipulate ledges.
A keyboard takes the shape of a window spread flat.
A filingcabinet’s banged with a stick, an arm carries
on.
I stop generating bridges.
Who am I to think I bleed?
Who am I to be a nexus for textual oil?
Who am I touching a disk that holds another disk that holds?
Pins prick the walls, blue ribbons sidle tubes.
Photocopies along the river are crude, made first of twigs,
then copper
platelets.
The whirled flicks the corner of a triangle in me.
I fall where rocks tear peaches.
Margin Swimfin
A thumbprint resonates a gold compliment from an orange runway.
The lamp swivels, blue putty inchworms across the table.
The ability to concentrate’s on vacation.
No, not vacationing, it’s lost on aleutians, primordial
& without sensible
chutes or weighs to eat small crabs.
I’m the only one in my office, I’m with papers
& books, the deskcalendar, the
tapedispenser.
I’m the only one who sees a V.
Of the angles that propel the body, I’ve named 2: 1’s
Marilyn, 1’s Cadillac.
Digits want to sell me something.
A reed’s entangled in color & idea.
A read’s thin, it gives in the wind.
Nothing’s vibrating.
The legs’ wires slouch from going over & over the
left shoulder.
A woman in a bookstore waits furlined among the shelves, glistening
viral
deficiency.
She’s clef to my pitch, its pith & its depletion.
A claspedhand’s a claspedhand, a claspedhand behind the
back’s a rally to the
dissolution of claspedhands.
I raze the city with renewal.
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