FIVE POEMS
Silver
Ambassador, Woman, Spine
Décima Muerte al Lado de Mi
Neovascular Petals as Our Love Wanes
The Purkinje Effect (Dark Adaptation)*
silver
“Silver is the future, the past, and narcissism” —Andy Warhol
Rolled her own reptiles,
cigarettes,
crying crocodile terra cotta
cocktails
patio pool,
location scouts
the wind
the locomotive mastication
of a nude in the chlorine
breaks an heirloom fever
how would you ever find your way
back in the dark?
Pluto's elimination from
the universal mobile
I came quivers from
under the weight
of my liberty, at last, she exclaimed
and left the atrium
without the canon of happiness
without summer mistletoe torque or
the straw religion of rhubarb
nylon across her slippery mouth
each membrane an encased
golden gun, a golden vacuum,
a lustrous headline
that blares, “sequined
swamis smoke clover,
cry tears of posture, wrestle
with the world of the elements
of barnacles, miners, & ingenuity”
you should know, she said,
when we dance the security
samba, when we mention
grains of conversation,
you shan’t be an easy participant
in insanity
ambasdsador, woman, spine
Birds duel with
womb cabbage
in tulip fields
chestnuts of evolution,
A GRAINY JUNKET
all the dirty drains
become portals.
I am the protagonist,
the truant officer,
a fish that comes apart
with a minty slice
OF THE MEDITATIVE KNIFE
here we live in
the flaccid lobbies
of life
(whole life) is interrupted
by wood and paper,
fishing lures & habitats
our freight identities
(how many times I’ve
misspelled
after a hummock day)
obsequious at midnight
open to the gallows
in oily August.
Décima Muerte al Lado de Mi
(para Villaurrutia)
life, my pupil dilated
and Muerte dies
in its own presence
the kitchens' conscience
of none
who/which visits me
ain't that a kick in the head?
running without walking
the anguish of thought
that we can think
of its existence
In all worlds,
the water and earth
lens
in air that I breathe
in the incidence of
of where I go and where
it goes with me
in the alienation
of my confounded blood
I don't know you, Muerte,
in my life of fire and wind
If you have hands
you have exactness
when I most believe
and your eyes watch me
without Muerte,
your luck, life's pupil
if of no disconcerting
tears, your gaze without
rosiness, your pain is with me.
For those unknowing horses
those mysterious mountains
through my closed eyes
and enters my obscured room
the evolution of change
and luminosity, eternal and pure
No sleep, you hear.
Play your silent voice
of nothing, you envelop
the body the desert odor
of sleep you know the lost,
the missing.
The depths of memory,
profound insanity you know,
classically you pass through sky,
the pact you made
in the blaze, a fugitive of the forest
¿qué será, Muerte,
de ti cuando al salir yo del mundo,
deshecho el nudo profundo,
tengas que salir de mí?
Kas yra, mirtis?
Žiniosi kod aš eit
turi mano išejimas ir iejimas...
neovascular petals as our love wanes
Pistils, blunt florets
here at rest and in motion
your tender components
organic and aqueous
your voice sweet pollen
in my lungs
like pending interrogatives
The geometry of your blooming eyes
is a spider under an atom bomb
running your perfect brush across me
shut off as a Cadillac mastodon
over my love months
and now dawn to you
vaporous skin I loved you
unraveling in your arms
like an 8mm film
The Purkinje Effect (Dark Adaptation)*
Persimmon violins
strike gold, implode
the census, wrestle
antlers & altitudes.
I tend to navy insomnia
darkened in Savannah rouge,
ash still crescent to my
native sex. I'd like
to exclude my tongue,
make it foreign to me
in the shift of your
color, the light of a
lover I always knew.
Pull Icarus from his
cone, sugared &
illicit. You were
evolution & steam,
all in my bed of
language & latitude.
*The tendency for the peak sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward
the blue end of the color spectrum at low illumination levels. This
effect introduces a difference in color contrast under different levels
of illumination.
is a
Lithuanian-American poet and short fiction writer. She is Co-editor of Milk, an online literary magazine, is widely published, and is the author of numerous books, including her recent chapbook: Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star, and the forthcoming The Range of Your Amazing Nothing (Ravenna Press, 2007).
Her website is www.linaramona.com.