7.24.2008

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


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