This is a draft of a longer version; part three was published in the Golden Handcuffs Review. There is some lost formatting. I added dashes for spaces

Her(e) Shorelines Leakage
for Nathaniel Tarn

I. Dreams Writing the Myth

Several old western towns I was dreamed
chant light in bar bustle close shoulder
over there’s Jesus looks over his glass
I was turned away again work to do
at the bar

you think this mean I rejected my foot up
or drank or was forbid or
---------------why would I not rush across the bar to
crush his rose in oil?

I am sailing the same way
a dream he walks past me in the water
but goes ahead or later wind pushes me past
the same coast

that long kiss lip of scarp Dover or pine
sketch of my back as Draco
weveren North Star his eyes
tattoo--I already wear--his breath

you put your hand down into the dirt
they come up flowers
he walks the water out
that long reach

sideways

****

The differences among stations collect
you begin a June-cloud
aster meadow not yet bloomed

& birch sticks whisper you lay them out
catch-frame to stop wherever grass
and separate stars--

star-echo rose fades close
not desert or shore lean fence
in moon-shadowed--

thread more difficult to apply justice at this stop
what justice rose-scent signed we whisper
to staple desert makes an auger pleat, there

perhaps a thorn the doubled skirt
or name’s remembrance head lost
in air’s tousled “where”

body none-the-less is sheets of fields
and clover and darkness bed-laid
fallen under it---with last day’s leaves

****

A man gets laid out in grass stars by birch tassel
as first place of catch self
and pile-woven are the three strands

heart cavern and stone face and a windowed room Rilke calls
offen, or “far-gone” (other-
wise “open”) sisters;

then listed to the wind? Mast
before knot-effigy dawn you surprise as power,
dies was dead

scattering your lions
scattering the spat the say
spits back ash.

Or names of limbs? Divisions
of extended air, my quarters
among the discussant angels?

Since caught space is otherwise scant
but shelter the startled name makes folded
parch and bench and osier nostrum.

I say “Always stitch the willow-pattern
into the vice and wallpaper the ash-dark
unlit halls and window the world

in such uncertain filigree
as must sign
of the farther, the storm and murder

makes lit the waves makes hold
is loyal in the morning hours
is west and pool and most upward

melancholy shoulder.” Day not made
by birch or cross or caught
stirs itself---across this Strata answers.


II. Voices in the Grass//Loverman’s Answer

[we didn’t know why we had killed them, it
wasn’t to our advantage or because the river
had whispered, if anything it was because,
its secret breath was stopped in culverts &
no communion with the larger space was
offered; if it is difficult to explain what
angels do its at least a name for a marshal
hand; we like to say “my face ran away”
or “I stepped out of my body” but the body goes right
over to the door you’ve stayed behind
and we don’t know why we killed them
piled the pyre, its simply “the leaves shook”]

***

When we don’t understand, we like
to say “nature” is the cause—seals
swim in packs, and dogs,
so it’s a function, which means
a dwindling curve, points
towards that interstitial chordal lot
twixt in and ex

later, we get lost walking between
--was
a place where it had rained and
there were puddles and cricket mallow
but its difficult to keep the debutante
out of your step she keeps
catching up

mostly we’d like to slide into
something more comfortable and
gender is always the easiest
deception since we are, after
all beautiful
even though we kill we
don’t know why

we gather around the horse
in a field and quick
cut her throat and then flay
back her rib-flesh
and this is the beginning of governance
or it is hard to say
why we agree here, but a circle
is a start. Are the coals bright?
the fat bubbling?

as long as I can return home
I can pretend it was someone else
or a hunger or purpose
that gripped my stele
and set it in that field
around a fire.

*******

What begins Astarte later is city streets I am
still longing, arms broken, a torso—oh turned surface
head would confuse, that I forgot you make me your
eyes make men, make yours I am also, O, in what
film could that happen between? Could I break into
your hard seeing?

They thought words were like that, a fence medium,
I said “she can’t read the cards, that one you refer
to” but imagine & so a share of the sun painted
her shadow too, scrawl my brow, “but that’s
what you were thinking” when we find an unexpected
extra room in the house.

See I already make armatures, the second verse
a map, parcels, what I wanted to say
is what I call “her crease”, but’s the expand I felt
she would a long inbreath I’d have to wait for seasons
to flow across the sky before she’d speak; her crease
out of sight.

***

I press in lintels what words to cross your bow does not make
in this writing, I bend your fingers back

all things proceed Sabbath as Rockwell, our fierce license
makes dim light, irony tough, willows clatter

were you mine, the old agreements listen, were you mine
you would not bargain to step true, would

parse further, a shore discrepant, ‘till, among other,
what comes to hand, falls open

a day’s margins are married & all skies pass the night
all oak blossom, all winter seal, your hand’s prayer

old holiness has a damp smell of unwashed mold, masks
captured Cupid, “here we gathered among a dead language

and prospered”, bent tax to parasequence abyccus, kept count of
false liberty by snipped adjective, her worst

hunched on a shore awaited, hunched gazer seaward in eye’s majesty
Carnac and confident limits would hold, would the farthest say

“steerage” or “sails” as images for this canted world edge he
walked across or gunwale raised a finger pushed to heart

“I walk away from cultured fields, do not cast sails to skim
a sky reflected green dark semblance; at night, among reeds

or close to fire’s lesion, there’s the knee and all ambition fostered,
I can more perfectly say or better yet keep saying.”

***

and so,
I am place
and rivers of rooms run through me successive
and meadows
spurled with poppies and witch grass
I was, as if floating, as if Manhattan,
a lingering in the air

sight foremost and distance
whether the walls are bookshelves or prairies
winter’s edge and shelter
a carpet shifting
walled always walled or skied or directioned
always turning, always season
what passes through me

her heels at the door approaching
and departing

Whitman’s American Eye
and the hour of my day a Book
of Hours since prayer is place
the curtain moves and pulls
against

(each eyeful, neither talking)


III. Desert Aster

Stars flare//if it had to do with word’s sense
slough of cels from//it’ll be a wound

menstrual hair erupts//like grass between
cracks//in children’s fists

bladder floor of warehouse not wellspring
collapse, lea, marsh, bog gutteral

flicks stream from his side Saturday blue
reflect clouds also orison cigar mash//lettuce cornflower scrap

desert skin or window slice shreds two
reflections//yours and mine//or stars

Rebel Without a Cause floods menstrual ore
skin weeps at bruise//breaks//he leaks at night

fecund wound I kiss lick—his cunt the spear
will make, already nocturnal

the way to sew a future into the ground
makes thought spill: a crossed road lines

you make me leap baby all porpoise, thanks
few considerations are different

me borrowing your bike a minute, burrowing
what you saw in me: a scarf

he was still sleeping and you were feeding
off my double, not serious or anything

a nice Sunday hat or style as compliments flatter
I was more conditional//your ticket

when God talks//cusp sliver in your side
not my angel//I wish//who tucked it

dark sleeps darker not lit a lion, listen
to heart stops//I would try to make you

but can’t throw up or am otherwise dislodged
a social tool, but am responsible black

asleep the movies flowed off across desert sand
all doubled things were similar

earth and stories: she was reflected and reflected
was actually my eyes I suppose

disappeared behind them, stacoma eclipsed
or parsed by stage curtain//silly boy

falling in love with his own eyes
that way her arm was.

****

outside the sky flattened a prairie sky and horizon with dawn or red line of night I mean the shore it was at the edge, a road traveled, he was lying in sand and wounded a wound a bear opened his mouth his side split it was that kind of thing a fairy tale I told it split open and water or hair all grey and wet splayed in her fingers over a white basin I mean a beard spilled out her transgression was his blood it was all over his side, Judy Garland and bent Cary in flickering stills all fingered desire all desire ran out of his side in a gasp oh so love struck mistaken she lived nearby I mean the night fell I am trying to say what both sides of a window any word does it but can I make you feel? does the curtain billow in or out and what is your tongue doing licking the edge open, I mean flaying it back all corpuscle all twelve moon blood stain spatter

I’d fold that back he was naked under the stars anyway a blanket and when I say blanket I mean the whole color dipped in so dipped, stars flung out over or the brocade was a story threads out that we have a place by the river… it’s a horizon or a shore I mean a line you can draw in the sand what I’m saying is a fold you can say I mean whichever way the wind blows it starts with a fold and broods over it I mean brows oh, don’t slip away

stories slipped out of his wound mouth edge horizon like blood but bloomed in a desert ground beside rocks and lions watched

many colors all shepherd show and Joseph or Rousseau we were emblemate of this like paper flowers and stocked the stage//what reflection rips don’t trace//its already written

they all hushed nearby he was sleeping this dream horizon ocean shore thing spelt wound which blossomed, stacked up like winter wood. sleeping this spill wound this lotus wand this roar since all lines, all the written lines, the blue pole’s satisfactions and police, all the structure making and missive and kiss that kiss makes possible I mean makes kiss her lips that spell the ocean falls through

the lines give way not connected into tidal the dawn drifts a wound be your heart I mean listen to it be an ear was an ear suddenly lifted and not dawn, was perked, not shelter, not written and between the lips that were not lips but sky and sky a tongue and taste and before it split

the sky will split but not along the egg’s edge I mean I was thinking of his wound under the stars and the desert sand receiving his story blood and the film cels receding away like rivers across the sand and all Judy garland and romance and Saturday kid stuff sex and high school made passion like Springsteen his most sexy press all made into grass and other fecund oh baby cottonwood

what was not supported and fell what the bear’d been waiting what came out of the wound not night her edge I was saying and making analog all these differences sketched so seam-like through

but what the sea wakes

all tidal between saints and points

I made her tree her lifted tree a place I spun the night into an ear over his body slept what death or depth disturbs

what my eyes cannot trace nor horizon limn nor shore divide nor essay dawn a saying, what was not bird’s wheeling arc or sketch or lifted skeletal scaffold night or poem written “horse sacrifice” or burnt man

whether bled out as flowers or let in like guests, the curtain billows

I mean I sat there and it was day and night perhaps prairies stretched or some other asphalt or wall paper I’d designed or yours I let get written into me

written into me billowed out still had a spine, a fingernail edge half moon piled eggs breakfast edge

I was worried at it all chewed was worried at dawn gnaw and by now the temple was frescoed with shadows

we were still in a room outside was bleeding into a sea; what tidal disturbs

no figural scribes


****

just having to say two a boat capsized but
it was truth, not a story, it echoed right
(they say “rang”) at the eye’s hinge, but
capsized was dramatic and overstated

two was true it was split or spilt both happened
like a cat’s eyes and saucer’d milk
an upstairs neighbor’s wash bowl breaks
a leaking ceiling means menstrual you feel it

two gets hard to say since image postures suggest
a space between the hands, a frame you can decide
stops//marble, agean, agonate autumnal park
leaves, all wet—whole trains of them in Metro Arte

and all the pretty eyes loved images so swoon
were preferred and addict I mean added like swallows
inked into imagesky all the pretty eyes forgot
closed, leaked, lids in place cement

it was her arm he said I’d never give up my eye
I was all possessed it, a pornographic, a different
scaffold, never what I loved that forget her arm said
its artificial womb casement, its columnar, second turn

she was double said don’t mind it, scarves and silk
all the pretty rapture is always twice and distance
happens anyway you think image forget any space
you want—lack is your fault a muse

nothing to dig turns yellow anyway and image space
is your eye not mine make it mine oh baby
see it? that’s what you promised talking ballestrades
and Emily//weren’t you?

all two you can’t have is not lack but being split
in physical astered orders writ nature from birth
all frank astir, all as tooth//serpent was tongue so
who would not lisp form as star done doughy

keep walking into my ear she said, winter it somehow
is still veiled; she vanished at the alley’s mouth
turned to paper, a gap of buildings, then
pulp mouth and other delta confusions

it was two it was apart being, that’s frank
silence works anyway despite eye work and
espleinade, before works, but it’s a third or
fourth uneven.



IV. Offshore St. Mark

they will cast out devils and lift up snakes in their hands

trance equal to shape, I suppose a shoreline
alongside net lines we gather fish or blood
brain boundary of thought we splash across
gull track or tern to a sparse horizon

what’s clever is a knot of these, a posey of
borders clenched in offering or love
you follow that density, a whale or hollow
drifted bank, of your throat’s yellow

aspect a trace, a name ashore, thick
plum tangles bent by list,
when I can’t speak I return there forget
my body is an ear

your difference a spar that breaks across
a sound, feet splush, in true Zion
made noun a blood, cracked open as
unfooted; don’t fret your boat

floats by my window, fourteenth floor,
a castled without plumb, I walk past
to make blindness pearl back—
what you fish for

Jack’s a pons said a pose Merrimac saint a
snake spell—he called a big one, snook
on his hook a thorns a thieves
all flood a tilt; writ roses in an air

perhaps spelled you, your child
pulled all daisy out of Lowell heights.
“Call snakes a staff you, a sigil”
all writ warning.

Soft you heard it, your cast too
brain sedimented in hours like
piano keys, a call a snake up up up
out a ‘em water, a pons your worst mare

makes a rattle. So no I walk past but
your boat a vectored at, wound agape,
releasing knots, walk past
boundaries apart and lines

ascry.