Orono '08

(a sideways response to the National Poetry Foundation’s Seventies Conference June 2008)



this
little swan’s neck
this 
in between the two 



from green and green
striated by stalks



white poplar   paper     ash
breast a garnet among apples or



whispering pines
black flies
gooey in eyes and lips



orono derives from the penobscot indian chief

perhaps there was a meadow 



                             to drift



always a night sky
what stasis in a bed two sheets



a blanket a window open to the night
breezes books but too many
people to read them



am I inside the bottle?
can there properly be said to be
an externicity?



you can share my aorta clark coolidge
nicole I will make your bed



for you    be a goose feather
among other eider



bernadette your memory
ticks       the voice



from the past a pipe
3-d     some photos though dark 



illustrate a dramatic sky b/w tall buildings (again)

a liminal hymn



again           a sparse room
clothes hung on a fire escape



have flown your body
& are a part



metonymic moans alongside the corps
the corps texte   the cortex   oh nicole



you squeeze from flaps of skin
bits of protein    dna flushed 



into auditorium seats       a gaunt body swaying

with art or bersani’s shattering



                          didn’t anyone see?



joe b’s if nancy was
 (I got your minnie
 hair in my mouth)



and katz’s faces of the
poets w h i t e out the gallery



poet bodies mulled dispersed photographed
kevin’s black and white 



stripes moving into a –riley? in the hall of bernadette

jayne you made us



B & K are school boys on the bus
rob and I in front



we play dodge & seek
                    to have    ate
                    eaten    ain’t
                    ought



       fall 
             depart



mediation– I meant meditation– in airports

prone the window pictures



Manhattan in the distance
inlaid ceiling gray and white  dusk   ash
eggshell     ebony      ekstasis



oh moving sidewalks
in a tunnel flanked



by flat screen panels
depicting urban street life



passing



neon tube lighting somehow
rest or joy


sheer mobility inside
a machine



chaplain’s modern times
moving among  rapt
gears



                Robin Tremblay-McGaw