Anne Boyer
FIVE POEMS

from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 1
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 2   
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 3
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 4
from "In a Torrent Virgin Plain," 5

About Anne Boyer

IN A TORRENT VIRGIN PLAIN

1.

To see you naked Kansas
winter lawn mowing

withholding from the Shaman King
episode lists
how to cook a rapist
in a northwest church
Fresno of electric blue

headlands oceans
dried up just like that

to be witnessed in the privates
of my country

distinguishing the language
the very simple language

dismantling
the natural in others

and that she has chosen
the book originally to have been called
A Completely Different Person

new values sort of unhappily inhabiting aesthetics
generated from the emergence of terrorism
to console and redeem

secondly
outlier repair
hosiery Sherwood Anderson
paxil frat fuck

the Left cannot talk

 
2.

Kansas your ancestor was out in the woods hunting
when one of them redneck grabs his logic

then I would laugh every time I heard
nearly every Mennonite
canard:

Kansas—
stupid fucking rednecks—
they do not believe in science (which is evolution)—
then they in Kansas is everything hick—

how many dogs do you got under the porch?
they tend to be slick, sophisticated, and free

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

phyla are body plans
the rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless
after six months of dormancy

they prefer to be known as physicists
of course they fall

where anti-God
where apes
where the flat
done froze our brains

3.

I did not then measure
up to my stature
and the man who for you put aside chaff
and water
you confused with an invertebrate
and food for many animals
or a killer
eating part of his own head

I had a set opinion
we should be the one who is dead

blood was drawn from the femoral vein
and placed in deadly washes
blood from animals from several landscapes
blood from deer and elk in Wisconsin
blood from captive industries
blood from farmers selling grain

Silence is the law of the luckless
though for these treads
the rest are suffered well

4.

We are Bleeding
only much much more so
in Kansas a great deal

that it does not require the added sweetness
that it turns out wheat farina
that these are temporary shifts in the wheat market
that a wheat producer will move with each breeze

plump plump blue sky reel big fish blue sky
a conceit
of the un-lame
new arsenal stadium beast of the earth

little children in the carts remembered
the blind should see and the sick be
required to tie dye-soaked strings around fat jets
until becoming an expert population of farmers

William Allen White was black
with coal and chaff
and tears were striping his features grotesquely

the palsy of terror loosened its steel bands
a white terrorism is horrible

“the huge abhorrence” includes
how to produce a great point about power

who owns democracy
and lots of bare, undulating land
succumbs and loses her voice entirely

but I can’t ever recall having been slagged
using these gifts as lures

Note this
the shrewdness of apes
a terrible and a terrifying place

5.

It was played to death
and its remakes are crap
but still it sounds okay Walt Whitman

then we get lost and poorly written
for this we can principally thank suffering
and the foreskinned/unforeskinned sons of mothers

plus ça change, plus c’est compost
or a combination of bugs and overwhelming war

I guess there is nothing more to say
probably decades of slovenly affections
probably a circuit debate
probably comes another raw poem about monkeys

I will shoot a tiger!
Walt Whitman is gay!

I had a sort of dream-trance
in which I saw an imposing Kansas jail
with the ambiguity of language

every cell had a stenciled arrow pointing toward Wichita
every slick majesty cost me an arm