One of numerous stones sifts through the mind’s seaweed
wavering in the water when a body moves through vertigo
and the current brings the tide in as sleep returns.
Years go by. The intern from Seattle sent north
from Minneapolis to this paradise of fish and deer
says the names of the stones strained through seaweed,
weightless before the middle ear freezes,
the shifting of stones become a slowness now,
heavier. The brain chatters, When will thaw come?
Through the body’s channels leading from head to legs,
one in sudden pursuit of the other
turning too quickly, the body tumbles.
Many years since the first such fall, the verbs
outnumber nouns, vowels the consonants,
and fear of the tic, the bloc on a d or t,
the poles of the inner ear melting that bordered
terrain with its white bear, its frozen deer, fish thawing,
creatures seeking higher ground, waters rising.
After falling he regains the feet their ankles do not aid..
Vestigial memory knows how he learned to fall young
on the field, primordial body wedding flesh with bone.
(11 April 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, April 11, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Fascicle of Amity: 20
This is the last
and least among
these unnamable
bundles of billets-doux.
She lives with corporate plague
so near I never go there
unsheathed.
The character of her skin
is a pale shade now.
So many,
two men most,
sought to suck her beauty dry.
She learns fast.
Come too close to her, they die.
(10 April 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
and least among
these unnamable
bundles of billets-doux.
She lives with corporate plague
so near I never go there
unsheathed.
The character of her skin
is a pale shade now.
So many,
two men most,
sought to suck her beauty dry.
She learns fast.
Come too close to her, they die.
(10 April 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Fascicle of Amity: 19
One must imagine him happy.
(from Camus)
Leave it to him to stir the air,
slake his thirst with the dew from leaves,
eat roots, shit where deer were their delicate
hoof prints. He sleeps once clouds shut out
moonshine.
In the sun and rain and winter furies
he remembers, love was all that changed him.
Hitching to town, walking most of the way,
in the internet coffee shops
he wrote
on napkins, sketching words, hammering sound
until music took shape. He read
aloud the only truly serious
philosophical problem, how to die
with grace
but by your own hand. The ideal
must be drained until it was real,
the blood in the rain your own blood
when she called from the other side,
Come here.
She hoped you would keep your promise and die
once she left you with the city's
levees burst asunder from hurricanes.
That was the city she loved like it was
her own.
(9-10 April 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
(from Camus)
Leave it to him to stir the air,
slake his thirst with the dew from leaves,
eat roots, shit where deer were their delicate
hoof prints. He sleeps once clouds shut out
moonshine.
In the sun and rain and winter furies
he remembers, love was all that changed him.
Hitching to town, walking most of the way,
in the internet coffee shops
he wrote
on napkins, sketching words, hammering sound
until music took shape. He read
aloud the only truly serious
philosophical problem, how to die
with grace
but by your own hand. The ideal
must be drained until it was real,
the blood in the rain your own blood
when she called from the other side,
Come here.
She hoped you would keep your promise and die
once she left you with the city's
levees burst asunder from hurricanes.
That was the city she loved like it was
her own.
(9-10 April 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Fascicle of Amity: 18
I have sleep to do.
I have work to dream.
–Bill Knott (1940-2014)
’case it all gits outa hand
make yerself a mask ’n be sumthin
yer not
(who could not spell let alone talk)
It’s pleasant on Pleasant Street.
Besides, I love to walk,
go to the Jones Library
read in the Sir Francis Drake bar,
the one upstairs.
Downstairs I meet Charles and Mary
from Lowell: he’s black, she’s white,
they love their life.
I walk over to Cronopios
where the book required, Cruelty
by Ai, “is selling like hotcakes.”
So I’m told. I’ll tell the students.
Next door, in the Quicksilver,
Tricia comes by for a kiss.
She asks me to go home,
it’s not a question or invitation.
I have pickled herring aplenty,
I say we can hit the mattress
and sup later.
She says OK and doesn’t move.
I could go on. Patrick Johanson,
Paul Stevens, Lance Walker
of Amherst’s VVAW chapter, ask,
How was Korea? I answer, I was too young.
Lance was on the DMZ, with LLRP
(or LURP): Long Range Reconnaisance
Patrol over the De Militarized Zone
and into North Vietnam . . .
Johanson (of Saigon) works as bouncer
where Paul (from An Loc) is 86'd . . .
whereupon he got kicked bloody and bruised
in the cellar of the Drake
by a gang swearing he raped a woman
in ’nam, “Where were you?” Paul asked.
“What’d I look like? Why was she there?
How come you’re still alive?”
Paul cruises floors in town for lost money.
Johansen comes on duty. I leave with Tricia.
Night surrounds us. We have love to do,
I have work to make.
To the memory of il miglior fabbro
Adam Hammer (1948–1984),
who once roomed with Bill Knott
in Boston
–May the gods bless their old souls.
(25 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
I have work to dream.
–Bill Knott (1940-2014)
’case it all gits outa hand
make yerself a mask ’n be sumthin
yer not
(who could not spell let alone talk)
It’s pleasant on Pleasant Street.
Besides, I love to walk,
go to the Jones Library
read in the Sir Francis Drake bar,
the one upstairs.
Downstairs I meet Charles and Mary
from Lowell: he’s black, she’s white,
they love their life.
I walk over to Cronopios
where the book required, Cruelty
by Ai, “is selling like hotcakes.”
So I’m told. I’ll tell the students.
Next door, in the Quicksilver,
Tricia comes by for a kiss.
She asks me to go home,
it’s not a question or invitation.
I have pickled herring aplenty,
I say we can hit the mattress
and sup later.
She says OK and doesn’t move.
I could go on. Patrick Johanson,
Paul Stevens, Lance Walker
of Amherst’s VVAW chapter, ask,
How was Korea? I answer, I was too young.
Lance was on the DMZ, with LLRP
(or LURP): Long Range Reconnaisance
Patrol over the De Militarized Zone
and into North Vietnam . . .
Johanson (of Saigon) works as bouncer
where Paul (from An Loc) is 86'd . . .
whereupon he got kicked bloody and bruised
in the cellar of the Drake
by a gang swearing he raped a woman
in ’nam, “Where were you?” Paul asked.
“What’d I look like? Why was she there?
How come you’re still alive?”
Paul cruises floors in town for lost money.
Johansen comes on duty. I leave with Tricia.
Night surrounds us. We have love to do,
I have work to make.
To the memory of il miglior fabbro
Adam Hammer (1948–1984),
who once roomed with Bill Knott
in Boston
–May the gods bless their old souls.
(25 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Monday, March 24, 2014
Fascicle of Amity: 17
You chisel ice from the windshield
after starting the engine and
gloves on, turning the heater down
once you’re on the road,
I wake by the time you are there,
thirty miles down the freeway where
you teach another day and drive
all the way back where I am not
waiting, I am nowhere, not here
nor there. I keep scribbling, hearing
actual voices around me,
curious why I was led here
to her house. All the others knocked
on her door, read dust in the air
and listened hard to the silence
whip the wind into dust devils
in no country you have come to,
though still you hear rivers flowing
and see the waterfall falling,
and say what there is you feel here
or you die too soon, you give up
but why when you have all the snow
and ice New England has to give.
(24 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
after starting the engine and
gloves on, turning the heater down
once you’re on the road,
I wake by the time you are there,
thirty miles down the freeway where
you teach another day and drive
all the way back where I am not
waiting, I am nowhere, not here
nor there. I keep scribbling, hearing
actual voices around me,
curious why I was led here
to her house. All the others knocked
on her door, read dust in the air
and listened hard to the silence
whip the wind into dust devils
in no country you have come to,
though still you hear rivers flowing
and see the waterfall falling,
and say what there is you feel here
or you die too soon, you give up
but why when you have all the snow
and ice New England has to give.
(24 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Fascicle of Amity: 16
No one catches on who was elsewhere.
Look at his eyes, their red rims.
Nonetheless happiness rings change.
She’s smiling, remembering. What?
Don’t even try, she loves him now
as then, when young he held Canipis
with both hands while she shot them
with the safety off: German shepherd
with her, Manuel working the mines,
a long sight better than rows of cotton
but not what he wanted. Moved north,
cleared overgrown fields, strung wire
and got the blue grapes to grow again.
By then Canipis was long gone.
By then they’ve lost their first son.
Here’s the second son. Can’t you tell
by the tentative, all-too-wary words?
(16 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Look at his eyes, their red rims.
Nonetheless happiness rings change.
She’s smiling, remembering. What?
Don’t even try, she loves him now
as then, when young he held Canipis
with both hands while she shot them
with the safety off: German shepherd
with her, Manuel working the mines,
a long sight better than rows of cotton
but not what he wanted. Moved north,
cleared overgrown fields, strung wire
and got the blue grapes to grow again.
By then Canipis was long gone.
By then they’ve lost their first son.
Here’s the second son. Can’t you tell
by the tentative, all-too-wary words?
(16 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Fascicle of Amity: 15
Put back in the dresser drawer
your dead son's baby clothes;
shift them to a tiny blue box
someone not me keeps forever.
Next time around he’s replaced
by one who must die in the north,
so it goes, Farmer’s Almanac
of souls that linger in limbo
and see everything writ large.
Not so now with the small words.
Settle for life itself. No worse
here than there. What death takes
fits in a boat, pennies on both eyes.
Some souls die to never quite rise.
(16 March 2014)
your dead son's baby clothes;
shift them to a tiny blue box
someone not me keeps forever.
Next time around he’s replaced
by one who must die in the north,
so it goes, Farmer’s Almanac
of souls that linger in limbo
and see everything writ large.
Not so now with the small words.
Settle for life itself. No worse
here than there. What death takes
fits in a boat, pennies on both eyes.
Some souls die to never quite rise.
(16 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
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