To end in nebula or flower, fiber of your blood—
Sun catches the East River as cranes and buildings thrust up
To clouds, to white hair, to black-and-white trees, winter-bare
To end in nebula or flower, to end in
We the wild wheat, hush, harsh lily, tied inside our mouth
With your tongue, you bless this, you
Speaking against a rapid skyline, we are on the train
Crossing from here to hereafter
Paisly floating, parsley floating, cosmic trickster gone through the meadow’s mirror
Into dissonance, dissident, departed at the throat
This runaway sun
Dashed-off
—
To end in root grass, common rye, Russian thistle in leaves floating on water.
Whetstone. I learn to be, to say whet-
Stone as fish surface and I say the tongue of you, I
Runaway sun, I act, I surface from the river to the marquee.
This land is tied inside our mouth
The image stalls on a stranger, black knit cap
Direct gaze, he is saying something about inevitability
And land and then again the shine
Off the river, the chorus, the polis
A runaway sun, a hushed
Lily, harsh lily, I act on behalf of the evening atom, the marquee, the rendezvous
Sky and glass architecture as you speak from the screen
In black-and-white and on a train rushing past fenced fields.
Loose in the knees, I speak, I throat, I powerline
The plunging and thrashing mouth, weathered footage
Of something shattered that cannot be reassembled
—
If we are a we we form a psychic cartography. A self, its soul in its mouth
Twisted with impulse, anointed with baroque flourish—
Or, sanded planks erecting cosmic institution.
I am partial to the bird perched atop
The chain link I am partial to your mouth
As you contradict yourself
Tally as twig, cutting, sprig, notched for scorekeeping
To perform this in the knee-high death boots of the ancients.
Appalachian engagement, I bow with cupped hands, an action
Untied from strings, I am unequal in an unequal land
—
Now shore birds and glassine waves. Now pan to the sea, sea
Books, sea boots, making one’s way down to the shore
In a fractured dance in need of buffering, what is the grass
What is the violin now soaring now silent, the cello
Silent, the translation into multiple languages silent
The image fractures to afford the past a voice
The spotted hawk, the chorus
The polis, the accusation
Root grass, wild rye, common reed, Russian thistle
The chorus has gone silent, flag flapping, flag flapping, flag flapping I
Act as the tongue of you, lucid
You loosening at the clavicle, you democracy-eye frozen as
The corpse is slowly borne from the room
Karla Kelsey is the author of seven books, including the poetry collection Blood Feather (Tupelo Press, 2020) and the experimental biography Transcendental Factory: For Mina Loy (Winter Editions, 2024). She is the editor of Lost Writings: Two Novels by Mina Loy (Yale University Press, 2024) and with Aaron McCollough co-publishes SplitLevel Texts, a small press of innovative poetry and hybrid-genre writing.