Untitled [The High Pile]

Megan saw Orion in Paris and it was me
there too; Same throbs

under each winding street. The keep-moving fast
around blind corners, the messages

stars loop needle under our
fingernails. Follow this across to the stairs in Quebec.

And dark between warehouses and warehouses and
where the river’s on pylons, wind

enough to remind us below:
caverns are a place for kissing.

**

Where black bat airs wrap faster than I can
unwrap you, the dark works

as a relief. A five-mile mine
below the street, below Munich, below

the map key and compass. In the light again.
Hair-line cracks burned

into sight and rivers. Where in that picture
we agreed to see each other. Canal Street

frantic before we met and the moon,
that giant ghost of a hole, never shuts.

**

The high pile: one hand, a jaw, three fingers,
the belly lump.

What is a person. Let’s say this heat is Arizona
three miles out;

is our fish in the oven.
Our pile of words grows blank and a top

layer of grease shines on the stink.
Not the kitchen or Kansas

anymore. Wipe your apron and sweat and remember
outside this truck, it’s always winter.

**

The highway runs through my bedroom,
a dark underpass.

My friends there, in strange
patterns: swarthy in coats, vests and girls;

the glassy shoulder is the threat
to make us beasts. With its substitutes and old teeth.

Let’s wade into the yellow lines, the real paint,
and stop cars. But Stephen stays

Stephen, red and on the side—
to the music, to the defense of his secret tail.

**

Show a bridge stretch, unwind its steel ties
in space. Where does it stop. Fog

gray
like to dream on water and cold

over the fish-heads; night stars, clear
up to the edge,

buckle and are clouds. We drove here once. This place just
fog now and not passage

across a bay or west; and the dream,
not the dream’s concern.




Garth Graeper lives in New York City, where he frequently pleads with people to visit the lonely borough of Queens. He also encourages people to visit www.uglyducklingpresse.org, the home of some totally bitchin' books of poetry.



NEXT

PUT OUT LIGHTS