MAY
MARTA: folded, stacked
to change the neck's angle
meddling in the relationship
between neck and back
comfort as rearrangement
going beyond the way things
are given
tweaking, fussing
in search of stillness
now placed across the middle of my spine
so I'm neither sitting nor lying down
I'm thankful for the in-between
I'm thankful for the malleable
and the softness
though if applied with enough
force
I wonder if all tools are weapons
Quiroga's story The Feather Pillow
is about a vampire pillow
but in the end the whole thing
is medically explained
everybody in town
gets to rationally understand
how the vampire pillow came to exist
their huge fear of getting too comfortable
too still
all this seeping history of seeing
comfort as an immoral trick
against nature
or as a symbol to chase
through labor
I type this fading as murder mystery aristocrat
my last words of this untimed window
fallen fruit rots
I have rooted in this bed
my roots are pillows
RILEY: Pillow
fell into a soft
cushion don't know
spit half-mine
hair sticks to cheek a pool of
tracing constellations
other eyes are small inside
my own close to an afterglow
residue of color faint
color the first of the night
seeing only non-existent colors
names erased rewritten
so the page begins to blush
white pink pillow red
what a head sinks into
sounds like kindling
smells like smoke
white yellow green
what's more lush than green
black
bedroom windowless and black
in natural light
night seems dark
life resembles sleep a
face its skull
crying from which?
corner of the eye
signifies happiness
you beat me in a dream
recently
someone else's
it's late and I'm happy
sleep is long
CHANELLE: (the hour goes by)
here for a moment
the drone and the night,
an elbow
alone I stare out
of sync with desire
night suffices and I
lay into it
on the floor by the window
the pillow under me like
I'm trying to translate it
by pressing in, keeping still
my hair down, I tell you
I worry my feelings
are irrelevant
shadow-tight,
the night suffices
holds a single note
then drops it
assuming the center
how am I to fold away
pretend I've salted my ambitions?
reconcile my standstill?
dive headfirst into
the breeze so close it
gathers under me
forms
JUNE
MARTA: was tryin to
tell you that
bad tongue clean
cut roof leeque
rum sour punch
c r e vice
mono moon chunk&sail
"perla sin más"
s ee more glass
child beach fun
pre loan task rooters
hand cream seams
which bless croon made
vinyl serum dam
this cooch piazza crops
creatine
kink pump lob
s u a v e cash smear
Beloripen blue
is locked in tract
primeval
rat sol mapistry
metalaurid kayak
best plant dreamed plans
Trap Man Calor
If and when bi-sombre cul
preop crank
cosplanet bronze
doom sap
diss may salon
crass polly zoom's cracked
Pe o ny
more pawn sum lies
cluster clap my lov
vicinity dance
lemur veranda prolif
in pain slurp we both meaned
to cruz bland
co-si marshes
RILEY: Sympathy
I wanted a drag of your cigarette
had nothing to give
change makes no difference
transparent light
stain upon stain of false moons
on the real one you pointed me toward
ponds left water on the sky, black
beneath waves above it
I love you less than
rose hips blue behind the eyes and yellow susans
no longer approachable as objects resolve
the narrow breach between familiar and true
as first and second darkness
dusk and its reference
lateness a temporal shade
the minutes grow uncounted
our leech hearts approximate their tempos in each other
wounded exposed to the light
I know of conversations
brought to mind by the sympathy of play
wounded by sleepiness my rules against yours
in the sleepiness of traffic
opening the beauty of my blood on your colorless wound
aching with pride to witness your fatigue
you continue to visit me
clouds of iron floating brow to brow
irreality is shared
with no more names for things
I feel like a body in the river
to my left I hear
and to my right I feel
upon my shoulder
extinctions of light transfused
as colors in a dream
piecemeal from dying things
sparks in the gap are figments of brittle attention
disabled by your brevity
seasonal tutor my heart is one on a garland
a string of hearts is lying upon your bed
just like water my memory is silk
falling from the slit beneath your voice
fringe of placid lake around my waist
petal on my shoulder
branches stemming from their fruit
berries opposite a bruise
my peaches withered overnight
you taught me not to care
falling out of the measure I kept
loneliness of body
cheek to shale
bone to bone a sharpened edge
ask before waking
far reach of the earliest wave
notice the tide on the wall
the salt in blood and sense
each other's source
revisiting shallows here with others
one kiss shared
by many like a tunnel between leaves
golden hour counted in turned heads
dear adolescent pines I didn't
visit you even one time
not even as I widened my address
fanning my affections as
I filtered through the weakness of my faith
losing substance every day
garnering forgetfulness as green
in the feather of a cut
latched with the secrecy of pain as informative and lush
uncommitted to the chore
of expression
CHANELLE: Sound Called Wind
no one
clouds .
I'm just looking
pressed onto the sky
the sky this word in your hand
the sky like a skirt
thick with wind
like a thread I lose sight of
my body fixed in posture breathes
I remember
undisturbed
a moment as happy
as a bird who takes flight
everything that cannot be
pronounced any longer
I slide into my hand
not a question —
a secret
an affirmation:
not for even the air
do I think any longer
for love draws me so high
thought is no longer
of worth to me.
JUNE
MARTA: tight-closed lips that form an inverted triangle
an old person may undo experience in a babylike way
and a baby is quite old as well
the basic physiognomies are frog, bird, feline, and bear
people with similar voices are connected by a thread
by the outmost layer of character
by summer surface totality
the two basic images of lightness are a single feather and bat wings
the feather points upwards, the bat wings point upwards as well
but reaching toward the corners
the nightsky gets cloudy as well
this happens in the space between seeing and knowing
you feel there is a definite distinction between them
but can't tell which is which
or how the gap unfolds
it is not how i imagined it
not how imagined it at all
and that's
a protection spell
how the smell of saliva changes as it dries out
so children love gross things
they are grossed out and loving it
grossed out for its own entertainment value
grossed out to overwhelm the senses
to be so up in here that
you're somewhere else
RILEY: Chariot
Stop deriving between
grass on either side
lying across the street
from each other in half-light
down like cats
heated closely to sleep
So
different by the time you've come back around,
endeared by foresight is a gift to be seen in you by others
endearment of a glance is summer's eye
over over itself in your eye is a brighter reflection
the shadow moon behind you look at me
river intersecting with your face
I found myself a twin your second
statue of brittle inside you.
Cloudlessly yellow
heavily personal joint
he is the weak spot between us
weakening further
we make of each other a distance more our own
heavily double in helix
and ring the field between
our fields of vision
our stationary progress
CHANELLE: *kopra
On the corner of goodbye and Piispankatu
I shield my eyes from the sun
and from saying it to you
my breath thick as a pearl
against my chest
the fallen light — resting
and the sky a golden gauze —
Summer
I only say I'm uncertain
but really I know
sit round as a stone
and keep my hand soft
(in waiting) I heard you
in slow sound mounting
without realizing it
on a Thursday in July
without realizing, I became
erotic an eroticism of light
that keeps pouring and pouring
across the corner, the cobblestones,
the windless heat as we open the door
(I held for you) (you told me)
it's the scent of the linden blooming
and I felt suddenly shy
as the shade —
when you knelt by my side
and quicker than glow the room filled
with the blue starlessness of
an envelope opened.