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<p><b>Joshua Bell</b> has recently published poems in <i>Boston Review, Iowa Review</i> and <i>Poetry Daily</i>.</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Cyborg</b><br />
<br />
Ramona your only eyes<br />
are river-traffic, are fast<br />
and fish-tailing milk,<br />
are troublesome<br />
<br />
devices, are difficult<br />
to mimic, but I will design<br />
others like them, I have come<br />
across the parking lot<br />
<br />
to tell you this. The world<br />
is dark with invention<br />
and I have mastered<br />
the variable machinery<br />
<br />
which moves your only<br />
mouth, I have mastered<br />
the root-path and shad-blue<br />
veins of your hands,<br />
<br />
I have lingered awhile<br />
considering<br />
the format of your spine.<br />
I can reproduce you. I know<br />
<br />
the river thought so<br />
too, looping out<br />
your living name<br />
across Kentucky,<br />
<br />
the foothills blotched<br />
with Orphic vowels<br />
and the consonants sticking<br />
like trees from the river-<br />
<br />
bed. All the pilgrims<br />
of Kentucky came<br />
to drink it, it was a name<br />
suited for such<br />
<br />
communicable<br />
purposes, the flood-water<br />
contrail of your R<br />
slowing through the flats<br />
<br />
of Georgia, picking up<br />
an open red and trailing off<br />
in salt. Like the river<br />
I have worried over each<br />
<br />
your every fingernail<br />
but I have taken clippings<br />
and you will grow for me<br />
marketable, many-handed, green-<br />
<br />
headed, whole and well<br />
in the flower, and such<br />
is my love that I will sell you<br />
I will mark you up<br />
<br />
and down and then<br />
the river will be nothing<br />
but an empty fist<br />
and even that is not<br />
<br />
enough, so I have had<br />
to invent the river<br />
who has never<br />
known you. I had nothing<br />
<br />
to go on. No model<br />
to guide me. I am<br />
a genius. I'll need<br />
to burn you ten<br />
<br />
more times. Twenty<br />
more hands, please, ten<br />
more mouths, your<br />
hair dispatched, sub-<br />
<br />
marine-like and prohibitive<br />
through the gears<br />
of axis, and you<br />
have gotten into<br />
<br />
everything, the cupboards,<br />
the insides<br />
of rocks, the water-<br />
table, the compass<br />
<br />
pulses slightly when<br />
I read the sentences<br />
you left behind<br />
in books, the tree-top<br />
<br />
Ts and Ls flat-<br />
lining into<br />
your anonymous<br />
lower cases– you always<br />
<br />
helped me feel so<br />
sick, so poor– I cannot<br />
wrangle with you in<br />
my sleep, I cannot<br />
<br />
spell <i>heartache</i> with<br />
so much trouble in<br />
the world or was it with<br />
your church shoes<br />
<br />
in my hand? But you<br />
don't have a choice<br />
you are coming back<br />
regardless; there is<br />
<br />
so much for you<br />
to do. Penance. Time.<br />
I've revised the blueprints.<br />
I've sold the space<br />
<br />
on the inside of your<br />
left arm. I have registered<br />
your coenesthesis – I<br />
can't imagine that<br />
<br />
your eyes will weigh<br />
too much – and I am sorry,<br />
love, that my science<br />
will not fail me.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>War Poem</b><br />
<br />
My platoon is all gung-ho<br />
about defilading and amassing,<br />
about Bob Hope and Sun Tzu,<br />
and yet we never met a rat-fuck wog<br />
we didn’t like. Right now they’re creeping<br />
toward us, through the mist,<br />
like pilgrims. Often we are tearful<br />
<br />
when we deliver them<br />
with our incredible weaponry,<br />
and when they cry it sounds<br />
like chandeliers, crashing through<br />
the trees. We’re at the fingertips<br />
of so much force; it makes us<br />
feel like singing. They have<br />
<br />
such trees here! With their bark<br />
peeled back, naked, they look<br />
like sunbathers, cooking<br />
in the heat. They would make<br />
lovely fenceposts. Of course<br />
I’m also talking about the enemy,<br />
with their upturned faces and<br />
<br />
the creaky, handmade bandoliers<br />
which do not match their boots.<br />
Because I notice such things<br />
I’ve often thought I should’ve been<br />
a priest, and my sister says that I<br />
am too soft to be a soldier, that I<br />
am capable of making love with harlots<br />
<br />
on the flag. True, I enlisted for<br />
the hair-cut, but I was simple, my body<br />
accounted for, and when at last<br />
I killed them in the trees and heard<br />
their language, I was no longer afraid<br />
since each word could mean anything,<br />
could exit bigger than it entered me<br />
and blossom out like milk.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Sheriff, You Forgot Yer Hat</b><br />
<br />
Miss Claire, I can't sleep, I shot<br />
too many Indians. I shot and shot<br />
but they wouldn't fall down. Such as it was<br />
I reached for the sky. I selected<br />
my cactus of the hour. I recollected<br />
fanciful things. Late frost last year<br />
I watched you pull your long-johns<br />
stiff and frozen off the clothesline<br />
like a flag. Did I remove my hat?<br />
There are whole days I'm ashamed of,<br />
and riding no-handed through the saloon<br />
I often think of them. Soon I’ll write<br />
a letter to you, describing all of this.<br />
When I reach for my pencil, it will be there.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Zombie Sunday (the dear reader version)</b><br />
<br />
Gentle handed holy father, or whomever,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;must we both stay as far and beautiful<br />
as we are tonight? You are the land<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and now it looks as if I’m going to land<br />
somewhere in the ocean off you.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lately, I miss the orchestrated<br />
feasibilities of earth. Down there<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(call it Nebraska) they read from left<br />
to right, like <i>Hamlet</i>, and even the tires<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;smell like spikenard, so maybe<br />
I’ll make it, partially Germanic, weightless<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;above the plains, reconfiguring<br />
my window, zeroing in on the whatsit.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like the astronaut I am always<br />
of two minds about re-entry, but you are not<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;coming for me, there are no rescue<br />
helicopters, no more sins beyond fruit<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and– Gott in <i>himmel</i>-zee decolletage,<br />
and I hear you whispering, just off screen,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;like a silent film director, feeding<br />
your scale-wage children the expressions<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;guaranteed to make me flinch.<br />
Zee world is lousy with zee extras.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Zey are so shapeless, like zee bear.<br />
It is so difficult, GHHF, to reconcile the stars<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;with my day to day ebullience.<br />
Perpend: I puked mint julep<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;on the badminton court.<br />
Apparently, I contain universes,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;these ill-born, constellatory pin-points<br />
thusly supernovaed into grass.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I saw you reaching for your high-lighter<br />
like a samurai. Like a samurai<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I’ve got something for you<br />
to explicate. What further strings<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;must I pull to force you<br />
to blast me from the local ether?<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You aren’t good for me,<br />
and still, I have redistributed<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;myself, according to the charts:<br />
A) For Lent, I bollixed up my homeostasis.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;2) For you I blethered numinous<br />
through reeds beneath a soft-core moon,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;me vaselined for the channel swim<br />
(thank you) and footnoting beetle-trails<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;with penmanship only a father could love.<br />
C) I will re-enter the natural world.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D) The world needs more light;<br />
your atmosphere is thick,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;is gloomy, and I am well aware<br />
that there are plates in restaurants<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;with designs on the edges, that there<br />
are miracles in the stream bed<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;which make grown men blush,<br />
that there is such a thing as <i>cornflower blue.</i><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Also, I have these childhood<br />
memories, crucified, esemplastic jellyfish<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;sizzling against light-bulbs, or so<br />
I have called them. Have taken<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;to calling them. Yon blithe<br />
teutonic heritages-skullduggery,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;bonhomie, illegitimate, all-and I promise<br />
to allow these several objects<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;their abhorrent and fetishistic<br />
importance, if it so please you,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;though the spell-checker, whistling<br />
like a bleached seal, has turned<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;my <i>esemplastic</i> into <i>eczema-</i>have<br />
your own sweet way, oh lord!-<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and 5) I wish I had a plywood<br />
cut-out of your body in the giant<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mouse suit-minus the head-so I<br />
could pose behind it, get my picture<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;taken, put it on the book-jacket.<br />
You made the amusement park<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;taste like peaches. I’ll never be able<br />
to trust you with the roller coaster now.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Zombie Sunday</b><br />
<br />
Gentle handed holy father, or whomever,<br />
tonight I only sent one invitation, so am relieved<br />
<br />
when I arrive, bulling in post-verbal<br />
off the crowded street, no more bowing down<br />
<br />
before the goblin-lidded traffic lights,<br />
my brain exploding like a pheasant<br />
<br />
from my head at last, bursting harried<br />
from the tree-line at your foot-fall<br />
<br />
and whirring through the air, disconnected<br />
from the messages you have left<br />
<br />
for it on earth, game-bird, the bar food shiny, the rail tequila<br />
aquavivid napthalene, and here<br />
<br />
you are again, you're following me,<br />
once that blind balloon man<br />
<br />
who slipped a naugahyde bible<br />
in my pocket as I slunk past,<br />
<br />
once that heartless bartender<br />
who gave my drink to another man,<br />
<br />
but this time a woman, cast<br />
in your weekend image, her reflection cast<br />
<br />
off the bar mirror, my skull a cast<br />
and it itches underneath, if I could just<br />
<br />
slip the chopsticks right inside and scratch,<br />
fetch the haywire nodal cabbage out<br />
<br />
and snap it like a wrinkled towel<br />
and fold it into something intricate,<br />
<br />
an origami terry cloth crane, a crispy lotus<br />
unperturbed, then might I gather up the strength<br />
<br />
to tell you what I really think, which is a sentence<br />
that starts convincingly with Stitch<br />
<br />
and ends up lost in Tuscaloosa, land<br />
of subject, where all used sentences come<br />
<br />
to drown each other out, and Night will have its porterhouse<br />
schadenfreude rare, so drink quick baby,<br />
<br />
they don’t serve your kind in here,<br />
big G gods with their superstructures<br />
<br />
all carefree and ballistic, your hair adagio<br />
(you are so small-you are a teleology),<br />
<br />
and lo your mattress, true, the gamesome horse<br />
which pulls this sentence through the park, O park,<br />
<br />
O little GHHF-your mattress<br />
tres fascistic-palomino-something-charger-<br />
<br />
you are a need and nothing other, a guilty<br />
midnight yearning for the reverse<br />
<br />
cow-girl, the morning cigarette<br />
lit wrong-ways at the filter, the illiterate<br />
<br />
tumblerful of scotch a crystal kindergarten<br />
in your continental hand,<br />
<br />
and in this bar your face, her face,<br />
the same face-get me?-and that same face<br />
<br />
the face which is the club that drove<br />
this sentence to the green, O green,<br />
<br />
O in the shadow of such a face<br />
in such a bar on such a night the days<br />
<br />
live briefly, like houseflies, like those good ideas<br />
you sent which slip away, in turn, like days<br />
<br />
if I don’t write them down, your face, her face, the negotiable<br />
flame retardant mask the kids all want<br />
<br />
for Halloween, and your hand, too,<br />
the means to diagram the declarative<br />
<br />
sentence of my death, no assembly required<br />
and likewise all the rage this year.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Zombie Sunday</b><br />
<br />
Gentle handed holy father, or whomever,<br />
they broke the mold before they made you<br />
except on second thought you weren’t<br />
<br />
made at all, they had to drill for you, they had to pry<br />
your fossil from the jealous rock,<br />
they want to carbon date you, to take you<br />
<br />
for a spin, to hold your hand<br />
and close their eyes when you lean in<br />
because they love you, oh they love you, your hillbilly<br />
<br />
swagger on the mound, the unexpected<br />
side-arm wind-up, your teeth soughing<br />
sweetly in your mouth, an albino<br />
<br />
field of wheat, and you tried to put the <i>I</i><br />
in <i>team</i>, you tried the first prayer<br />
out of the drawer of prayers, behind<br />
<br />
the socks, back corner, next to the lubricant, oh you tried<br />
your best with me, but forgot to flesh<br />
me out, and for that last important bit<br />
<br />
of skin, I would stand up on my hind legs,<br />
suddenly evolved, gorgeous as your<br />
barbered trees in winter, epiphanic<br />
<br />
as a motherfucker, and I would eat<br />
a cross of brick, I have filled your pillowcase with bees<br />
<br />
so I can sterilize my mouth with gin<br />
and suck the stingers from your neck,<br />
for I am the loathsome chalk artist<br />
<br />
reluctantly commissioned with the side-walk<br />
outline of your body, and you’re the comeback<br />
second-stringer, the player-to-be-named-later,<br />
<br />
the first-person-omniscient who plagiarized<br />
the <i>Autobiography of the World</i> and called out dibs<br />
on the future flower box my skull.<br />
</p>


<p class="poem">
<b>Zombie Sunday</b><br />
Gentle handed holy father, or whomever,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the stars swing in like buccaneers<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;through the windows, and they are<br />
beautiful, and they are yours, of course,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ditto cherry tree, and wildebeest–<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;how many times must you remind me?–<br />
and I am searching, now, for the French phrase<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;for <i>albino field of wheat. O mon pere</i> etc<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>doux ouvrier sacre</i>, your white teeth<br />
are learnéd. They read much of the night,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;they go South in winter, they ripple loosely<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;along the pale gum-line like those spirits<br />
on the haunted shore, which have elsewhere<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;been compared to leaves, but are really<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;more akin to grease, also rippling<br />
loosely. Oh asphodel! that something<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;flower. Oh but we should be able<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;to walk said shore and name the genus<br />
and the species. O GHHF, your coffee beans<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;meant nothing. They kept me on the phone<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;all night. I am a burnt arrow now, loosed<br />
from the Anglo Saxon bow your body.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You dream like a battleship turns.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Your two hands blooming folded,<br />
from a black vase, was an image<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought up, once, to help me get to sleep.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh but the sleep I lost, considering your sleep.<br />
And I am mostly sure that loss is French<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(le terror-dome) and will follow me<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;as far as Pittsburgh, human sacrifice or no, but I know<br />
for sure that loss transforms the delta, and is also how<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;you change your mind. Even now<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the Mississippi bend to your fuzzy will<br />
and carves toward Jerusalem. I am the paraclete of loss<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;in the House of Catalepsis. I am bald<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;as the wind. Or was it lorikeet, like Matthew said?<br />
Matthew, patron saint of the poult-footed and the rain.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh GHHF, you should read him, you might<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;learn a thing or two about yourself.<br />
Thirty shekels is a lot of jack, anyhow.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I have failed your comprehensive tests before, oh lord.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I am searching, now, for the French phrase<br />
for <i>lorikeet of loss</i>, scaly breasted and/<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;or blue-fronted rainbow, <i>Trichoglossus chlorepidotus</i><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and <i>Charmosyna toxopei</i>, respectively.<br />
I pilot the cuttlefish and tree the seeds.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I will burn the very Latin from the world.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I weep for every cheating drink<br />
I have forgotten, that hooligan wine<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;in Cerbere, for example, who loved the carpet<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;so well, so much more than it loved me,<br />
and I am circling over this your every sentence<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;as you drive it, looking for the loophole,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;but you will evade me in the driveway<br />
you will leave me for the rumored<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;carpet, you will ditch me cold forever<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;on the airless, sunspot runway where our bodies<br />
made more sense. They called me<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the hyacinth girl. The ocean was my stepsister,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;pregnant with a style of fish you dreamed<br />
last autumn, but in any language, I am Isadora,<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;zombie queen of the Appalachians.<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I knelt beside you yesterday.<br />
I bet you prayed for rain.<br />
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