from THE CARE WITH WHICH THERE IS
He writes in the sand: No. Along walls of salt. He writes: Pull. This way.
inscribes on flesh our fealty: For God. This listless, this inner work of envy.
Finger & hand, never neither looking, a mere form of belief become wolves
pulls under you, lugs up the unveil; in infinities the black wall, the planting of trees.
He writes in the sand: No. Moves from the fluted points, the sepulcher’s sepals,
my disknown arm for me. I lean propped sideways on the low sounds of the forsythia, listening.
He writes: The tiles. Of the. The Numberless the low lull, raking light
to praise, to sacrament. The lips garment letter writing. To you. To.
He writes: Come. Wear: a saying. Say. You clutch one in your whole hand, whose unrest is
a species of air. You squeeze a dear finger toward you. Am touched to view my hand.
He writes: Among cottonwood leaves. A circular world in thread of human events, a pier without wake, unburdened. He writes rudely thumb to mark. To mark:
No. To write: envy.
The child holds a wingless hero around the limp neck,
or
The child holds a worried piece of pink bone
maybe defeathered by a cat snuck in
or lonesome, it clutches a whitened man
the wooden frame blurred in motion less-
ness, as if to silence the seizing waxe.
or a child corners god
& is furious
it was the romantic internal combustion engine that made flight possibility
suspended the letters above
his jersey’s tincture, U for ‘you’
young dip and pulse, spit—
can the gaze reflected be
being spat, beyond its proper papered waxed frame
blurb: the foreground
child as aversion, as a version once repaired.
the vertical horizon of narrative
Notice that what matters is the wing angle relative to the direction of travel
not relative to the horizon.
There is a limit to border, barely.
Where the child-hand is
peeling off
the hollow bone.
the pine sap
seems to pluck
at the spine skin
…………………………………Kansas (from the border of another state; early morning)
clothed by a roomful of us, I’m bent
to the floor-saw
see how this may be or is
fluid matter made.
his body so smallish
in fever in grasp
you could
say the doctor,
slow-churn your thumbs
through licorice, I think his black,
eyes
but the doctor shan’t
buy it that way’ll
don’t you want to be less?
say the daughter
say the daughter
don’t you want to one day mother?
Love the savage oven you bake fascinated into?
……………………………………………………Michigan (from the air during twilight)
No more trips on train-but tracks for me, for me.
I’ll stay by my warm twin-half
for the moments our dining cars pass
out of the stitch-sewn morning’s
skywrite
I am made of another,
twinning halfpart
tho undeclared and unnouned as,
“The care with which the rain
is wrong and green is wrong and the white is
wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty
of breathing. The care with which there is incredible
justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent
asparagus, and also a fountain”
James Belflower's work appears or is forthcoming in: Jacket, 580 Split, EOAGH, LIT, First Intensity, Abovo, and Cricket Online Review, among others. And Also a Fountain, his collaborative chapbook with Anne Heide and J. Michael Martinez, is forthcoming from NeOPepper Press. He was a finalist for the 2008 Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the National Poetry Series Competition, a 2007 Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2007 Juked Magazine poetry prize. He runs PotLatchPoetry.org, a site dedicated to the free exchange of poetry books, journals, chapbooks and ephemera.
J. Michael Martinez lectures at the University of Northern Colorado.
His poems and reviews have appeared in New American Writing, Five
Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, Xantippe and others. And Also a
Fountain, his collaborative chapbook with Anne Heide and James
Belflower is forthcoming from NeOPepper Press. He was winner of the
2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize. He has also been runner-up for
the 2008 Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the 2008 Colorado
Prize, amongst other finalist positions. He is co-editor of Breach
Press and has poems forthcoming in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde
Latino/a Writing.
Anne Heide is the author of a forthcoming book of poems, Echo Robin
(Tarpaulin Sky Press) and two chapbooks, Specimen,Specimens
(Etherdome), and Residuum::Against (Woodland Editions). Her work has
appeared in various journals including New American Writing, Notre
Dame Review, New Orleans Review, and Court Green, among others.
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