Laura Solomon

 

 

Poem in the First Person

 

it was becoming more and more less. de-bespangled

with a glow so daringly swindled. folded as the laundry had been. freshly.

recently. when became had become less and less more.

nonetheless for it.

more for a her or a him. not an it.

never in terms of the thems they’d become

fermatas along a pull of chords.

it would behoove you to scat

out of town and that. with your mortal quack and quill.

take your jag of a bottle and slice upon the duct-tape. wield-weld it so spicily.

you can’t pout all day. spaz as if you will.

and the wheel widens.

when who you may be hinges upon who you may have

become

not how you behave. I have shape I mean shade.

I have mauve.

though not a thing of the that or the there which you have not to offer.

that which is always doing.

undoing. arriving along the inside-out. becoming.

day and delay.

dei the crescent to a slow.

pummel the velocity to a fit.

win it down here among the hunting.

become the hunt that holds our having.

and what will be had up here along the scaffold.

but never to be or have

to hold. how you will conjugate.

never in the third second of memory when all threatens to tag on apparent.

come. become cumbersome.

and then I was like. and then I was like.

and then I was as.

and then I was as I was before.

and after I was.

how do I reach the water and have we. do you really want to float.

come it is bright.

and then I was like. and then I was like.

and very much like the like I was.

 

 

 

Aubade 11/18

for David Shapiro

 

Sun at the wheel,

the white locomotive is still

further by far than far away.

But on the move, on its way.

 

On the moon, not a cloud,

a catastrophic glow—O

the stars are little doors, little doors,

open one, a million more.

 

“Brief as a door”

someone has said before

and still it is lovely,

to think of it now and how

 

soon I might sail

into a new more fragrant hour.

The forthcoming flower,

a green knife against a yellow river,

 

sun on a stick,

all the pinks and browns.

Everything is flexible—

the violin woman’s neck,

 

though nearly shorn through,

shaped like an iris,

could she see it.

Our black boat to some Thursday

 

bathed in the wounds of innumerable feet;

think a thought and it heaps

so much disease on you—

What is this noise? Why is this peopled?

 

Her throat purpled,

and so too the sky and still the bow

darting but the guillotining

boom knows a song.