Grand, Pitt & regress
and what was a Men’s
Club and what seemed
mensch-hewn blue as an
easy tell was the weakness;
brass, crush of door knocker—
Affronted by spittle edged stogie
chomping dirt; Decembrist
draught fanned echoes
billows flat smoke
air, fat lips of
weeks-old
racing form,
before lunch sop,
a printed fold carp
toward Mosaic felt grass
fill, whitefish, gray, hirsute
stabbing… always on the
rake, been taken in at,
making it in on left
iron sack corner
fold-up
warping chair,
whooping eyes, welt
handing at fate felled
up to a wrinkleness — singular
as dry, sugar tea mumbling ’bout
how could be me that’s dead, LIE
buried as in some grave greater
beyond, and there ain’t no
more nippin’ in the pond;
rumbling ’bout gotta be
us — can’t be our rest
just done plum forgot
ways, gone floating
a stone, this ether
sink dome, and
pullin’ down
how much
it say.
UHF T.V.
station,
micro-audible,
single-knot static
laces narration—“‘Cept
not out relenting anew,
far-flung, cornered;
language done
wresting
time (with
the tug) pull
and push tussle
of impassioned mutter
nor tin, torn hobby-horse,
secret reviling sepia hue, recall:
intuiting apace a parallel
lineage as fresher
dignity, scat-
like singin’
—
‘Seems
like starting
aright, guessed
to be confessingly
tight, been worse off
as, at first thought,
beholding, all,
so affright.’”
All Told — Jared Chipkin