Particulars

Questions would come. There would come

a querying after fact; it’s what’s done. Pens,

talking box, nova of interior light strobed red

by another outside, framing moments bled

of distinction; flattened, obvious. Men,

when not being watched, at times will offer

help to another. Peeling age, name, an address

from the dark he further lets the body suffer.

Because that caged bench seat in back

of a cruiser meant merely another spot

on this earth to put his body, or have it

put, he let it relax, folding over the vinyl L,

keeping the head upright so not to appear

no longer there, like baggage, a limbed sack,

or task. He kept the head with its eye-holes

up on its stalk, and the hands’ palms each

flat on stitched plastic furrows where

regurgitant matter lingered, sure, where

the splayed digits, white ligature, cording,

and flesh blotched from cold, rested,

visible; visibly shadowed in a pattern

like trellis, or netting, by the steel grill-

work that cut the space in two. He wanted

the body to seem at rest. He thought it best

to enter a System reclining, show the heart

rate of a swimmer in training. Court face.

Lifted that night from the coat-check, his

charcoal gabardine overcoat slides passed

in the glow from a bank window. Dark-eyed

Juncos re-design lines of ascent out where

the light’s arc ends. They’re patrolling the edge

of the social in the name of language.

Notes Pinned to the Largest Island Off the Largest Island

1.

We stuck sticks in the lawn’s hollows,

slept at sun-up, for an hour. Oilskin

and Mick jokes over Jameson on

the ferry out of Farewell, a sideways

rain slicking nubbled deck boards.

Lenses stared into the car trunk’s

dark down in car bay four. Whale

flukes northwest, once, like greens

spooned from stew. Rainbows

out near Reykjavik leaned into

over the bow rail, and white

wake below, a volatile doily

torn at by sea that wants to be oil.

Frank held up the gig being

high over in Tilting, talking

the girls into photo-ops knee-deep

in bladder wrack. Newfie switchblades

from popsicle sticks and clothespins,

we’d have tied our own flies and

hooked the vein hiking over

the second-knuckle. Edge of the flat

earth. Fuego, Fogo, somewhere way

west of who fucking knows?

2.

Pig in painted numbers, nosing

the low slats where straw rags,

resined brown, stroke the fairground’s

polished concrete. In a kind of

salad grate that keeps her fat

from crushing seven. Seven on

spikes staccato in the show

booth, snoring at their siblings’

nose-holes. Galway blacks

could jump a five rail gate

any horse and rider’d balk at.

In transit, a school of teeth like prawn

the driver wades into wearing

chain mail. Vietnamese potbellies

petted and picked up and flung

back at the goat. Fistfuls of spilling

pellet. They move like moles.

The ribbons are satin and blue.

Run-off exits a pipe all day and

a dump truck takes it off.

3.

He swung low, knee high, with

a walking cane and took its sheep’s

crook off on a phone pole. A bottle

blew through Venetian blinds. Frosted

pane a stiffened whale’s blow-hole,

splintered, reticulate, it let

the trees into the kitchen. Hit, then

fainted. Hit, then fainted. Under

drippy oaks and woke and couldn’t

cry. The pills are alright. Hello.

4.

It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t bad.

We slid round the corner on goat’s

feet to the Dep manned by the ginger-

haired man who resembled your father,

for Belle Geulle or Boreal, green tea

to go with the coke, and chips in tins

we can’t get on this side – this side of

the bridge you were terrified of, its groans

and see through pedestrian grates. Ice

down the pike keeping tour boats lashed

to shore under the shadow of the parliament

library no one can use. It’s not as bad

as we thought. Our patterned nights filled

with what comes next comes next. And it did:

rancour in the tilted kitchen, kisses while

you bathed, bullying silence as the grounds

got banged into the can. Give me the chemicals,

we’re not leaving for days.

5.

When he got sick, worms were

pinching the blossom petals and

pulling them underground. Moonlight

made the little flags glow, blink

out, so the night lawn shimmered

galactic. We didn’t know

what was happening. The doctors

aren’t given to telling; they’d dose

him and send him home to float.

A city in Japan makes a festival

of this, all brush stroke, seafood

and a divine quiet. He set about

digging his shallow moat.

6.

Paint cans with gummed lids,

buckled, and shut like bad clams.

Stir-sticks half-naked in moted

light. Particle board and exposed

studs. The skelf of a nail bent

back, hammered down in the grain.

Washers stare like squid from a silted

jam jar. Skis lick down through

the rafters. Knot-hole the size

and swirl of an ear. A push mower

cowers under the workbench,

sniffing oil stains. A plinth

of chipped bricks near intestines

of hose that molt on a door-hook.

A dog changes gears in a hedge.

One pane rattles. He turns six.