Pantoum for Tilly Matthews by Kathryn Nuernberger


 
 

You make the lines, but you must also obey their rules of repeating. He called it the Air Loom. Run by Jack the Schoolmaster, his was a sewing machine fueled by putrid fumes. Expectorants from the anus of a horse. The Glove Woman works the shuttle.

He called it the Air Loom. Run by Jack the Schoolmaster. What else could explain 16,594 beheadings between September 1793 and July 1794? Expectorant from the anus of a horse. The Glove Woman works the shuttle. The machine assails us with brain sayings and dream workings.

What else could explain 16,594 beheadings between September 1793 and July 1794? A mad doctor must be cautious not to debate with lunatics. The machine assails us with brain sayings and dream workings. A doctor must be afraid to enter a perplexity of metaphysical mazes.

A mad doctor must be cautious not to debate with lunatics. Tilly’s wife found him as lucid and gentle as he’d ever been. A doctor must be afraid to enter a perplexity of metaphysical mazes. For such good reason, she was barred from making further visits.

Tilly’s wife found him as lucid and gentle as he’d ever been. The loom performs its apoplexies with a nutmeg grater. For such good reason, she was barred from making further visits. It weaves the fabric of aether into a warp of magnetic fluid.

The loom performs its apoplexies with a nutmeg grater. During the Terror he had been a brave and worthy English spy. It weaves the fabric of aether into a warp of magnetic fluid. He delivered support to the moderate Girondins pleading temperance.

During the Terror he had been a brave and worthy English spy. Mysterious gases must have brainwashed the politicians and the populace – he delivered support to the moderate Girondins pleading temperance. Such a machine could only be the work of undercover Jacobin terrorists and Bill the King.

Mysterious gases must have brainwashed the politicians and the populace. Awaiting the guillotine on charges of espionage. Such a machine could only be the work of Jacobin terrorists and Bill the King. He passed many years in that place.

Awaiting the guillotine on charges of espionage, he turned his faculties to uncovering the machine of human suffering. He passed many years in that place, devoted himself to making schematics of the thing with an engineer’s mind and a draftsman’s pen.

He turned his faculties to uncovering the machine of human suffering. You make the lines, but you must also obey the rules of their repeating. Devoted himself to making schematics of the thing with an engineer’s mind and a draftsman’s pen. His was a sewing machine fueled by putrid fumes.

 
 
 

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of two poetry collections, The End of Pink and Rag & Bone. Her collection of lyric essays, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, will be released by OSU Press in Fall 2017. Recent work appears in 32 Poems, Crazyhorse, Diagram, Field, and Poetry International. She is an associate professor of creative writing at University of Central Missouri, where she also serves as the director of Pleiades Press.