Lot's Wife

Turning Back

I

cement stoop steps down to lawn     red brick red   shrub poison berries
              startled eyed                    cemetery mornings
childhood 10:30 AM sun between grace      no, graves, same cold concrete
              shadows

next door old angry man      with marigolds and pansies
              doesn't the world get so small
same sun              same 100 yard ravine                    same Bartlett Pear
              house the same

among this among this angels?       stone hopes for light
              it was no place wasn't it already
at three                could you hear it?     under the blanket iron railing

light falling through           the tent     through eyelids      pale rosy
              veins skim          I mean skin
staked out            a vellum be manuscript                        see Lot's escape

***                    ***                    ***

become words become birds become flying off become autumn become
death writing?                  I spit past             fruit pits             stains
              NOT FOR YOU BUT FOR ME
Woke disturned     working the well throat swallow        trance swift

all the water had become images air color had become cold air had
              a usual crown of morning   I had it  and
it wasn't me on the stairs on the lawn no more
              I was become spell image of this magazine Look

I was become spell image of American Heritage maps Civil War battle (Shiloh)
              I was     bookshelf                       no not that
I was looking at that                       but I wasn't as that memory

is for anger                      and more veils                  any 1962 air left
              steeples?           become Salt's wife?            salt's lot
testifying             mourning gospel spelled ink
                                                                laundry sheets

 

Lot's Wife

 

(cereal braids wick off shoo-fly mare's ivy dust)

start tape now: Mr. Karnuda fishing in murmur dull lake behind cold spell
            Shuegel's Drugs on Pearl St. comics and nickel baseball Willie Stargell
your vast Hall of Fame your shortstops its not relating punting or throwing
            the football high into the maple trees over the street over the street wires
into the spaces between trees up there the clouds between there the falling ball
            over and over sometimes a shank it was my brother would say when we
were trying to remember the boy Tuma twin who lay down licked grease off
            the curb Chevy no it was the girl ran between lawns skirts flying doll dress dramas and Barbie
skin and plastic secrets too soon killing ants by running them
            down with small matchbox cars carefully picnic ants it was "dirty jew" shame
but I was mad now confessing you think that matters as it becomes wick thin drawn out
            I liked to play I was a cowgirl sometimes we made like the bleach bottle
with skull and bones was liquor up over the washer and the water pipes with small flange
            for climbing cliffs or riding swift horses around the house little feet the rail fence horse the
Olympics Ed won everything everything was Maples wolves outside at night
            quick to the garage and back thunderstorms the grass space behind the hedge
I only dreamed like the street near school and walking with Bruce Joan of Arc Joan of
            Arc saying she was burning I was sorry but desire oh she burned anywhere
near here I could walk home from school follow her or save her from dungeons beneath
            playground sewers where all the girls the pretty girls were captured
but I went down was hurt but saved them hurt but found them tied six years old Bruce's
            dreams black-haired women dancing naked with penises & numbers and
letters at war exploding Klee battlefields levanthians the intercom radar with bird
            watchers manuals and books on the sea and magma studied knowledge
spilled out yet

(she says pull the mummy's skin into flowers pollen bursts of salt it'll still be there
            like lightbulbs in the basement no exit that way)

what else takes this away its lost I have nothing to share birds ate the trail see an allusion
            are (its not your memories its not your having beens its not its my hair see
that's not you its) no its I was what I was it's the imagined
            the imagined
                        threat

stop the tape: he's not going to confess
            it was a bad Ark
no solution

girls who become wood become wind become stone
            don't have any tongues

all the memories are still silled
            and special he has

not given the space he took back

 

Lot's Wife Rises Over the Horizon

 

under Kroger's sign the boy collects carts    his leg moves funny one foot turned out    not priced
             coordinated                                  old socks his mother maybe aunt maybe sister washes
                          his department store habit

under Kroger's sign parking lot's the sky's a color blue nowhere else perhaps because of streetlight yellow
              intensifies         inky should be swifts and swallows

mall lit-up Necromancer no Clamshell no Poseidon Green                         wattage not harvested gone to
              cardboard rafts    somewhere a factory somewhere a truck and a loading dock    somewhere a
              highway              brought

Kroger's by the Automart by Harold's Fabrics by Great Cuts by Beds and Books by Ikea   no I meant near
              not authored                  hard to say what it ever was                         asphalt is as dark as grass
                          Athena all the Athenas     named City

Harold nervous tick-tongued salesman at night locks the back door goes off to lounge love you were at
              highschool with    somewhere else its Friday night and the line at Big Boy's gets long
                          its Scranton PA   people look dead

Apparitions of the Virgin by Mississippi      I'd rather watch the next James Bond, he says, two boys
                                   their bikes outside video store       not yet stolen          whose time are they from?
               Boy Scouts or Evangelical ?       dying in slow
               years

Somehow timeshare retail makes enough for theme park briefly          ghosts of erased billboards moan
                          the fast shuffle                hectic used car lots         I need a car to get a job to get a car
              to get a job       somewhere an insurance agent
              looks up from his barbecue

George Washington Motel in Eastern Washington                   a boy sleeps in the bushes in the shadows
                          he slept here in that room it was before the salmon before the northern cross before the
              crow     from that time till now salesmen fucking       wishing they were fucking          someone
              fucks them
              girls that fuck them

moan Morman girl moan

her perfect dress all hiked up she holds on tight a spin or two around the canyon its fun like all wicked
                          like baseball                      like Jersey City    sin and roses      I mean rust          its fun
              like rust

like that outside Austin       she was a postal clerk just wanted to talk about a guy he'd left   pretty blond
              why'd the guy leave that                she was making dinner but mostly he wanted to go North
                          that was no solution                       so, the usual bad residue    she worked for the Post
              Office    for years

also that other guy, the one who works Shannon Road? he collects trains some other TomSwift stuff I don't
              know                actually owns his swiftly collapsing house   two kids   so he got his
                       what was that like?

Steve became a lawyer for the Navy a Judge Advocate a husband a      once at band practice John R. was
              fucking Nina in the stair well          Steve said                     I didn't look                      later I
              was there and a fox ran past                      they'd added a wing to the school

Athena's dad got her a MacDonald's franchise             there's some question where she is now      she was
              sensual so fat maybe           an American tourist in Paris             his hopes for her were locked up
              somewhere                       in a writing desk like in Kubrick's "Lolita"

Selections of magazines and fritos     do you remember?          a paperback copy of Anais Nin's "The Spy
              in the House of Love" in the Romance section         bad ordering? Seven-Eleven windows
              reflect alienated abacus      could be looking for love at the pool hall next        longing longing

No idea not one idea not one idea in America not one idea about America not one Pewter Pot muffin idea
              about stainless steel dishwasher       Tolstoy was wrong          a boy rides his bike down Rt 133
              smelling of clams   not one idea between them   not one idea                taste

Some things are permanent the hippie guy was saying the realist the universalist they ate carrots in a
              haystack near Little Big Horn                      the other guy had pointed through the car window at
              the brown hills no everything is changing     two roads divide             the realist left first in the
              morning               later the other guy found out                                he was going nowhere

Someone is living in each one of those houses oh God someone is living in each one of those houses oh
              God

Oh God, someone is living in each one of those houses

Silent Night Holy Night    Silent Night Holy Night   Silent Night Holy Night    Don't we love our
              Neighbors                      It's A Wonderful Life
Silent Night Holy Night    Silent Night Holy Night   Silent Light Holy

More spaces more rooms more upstairs ladders upstairs more vast warehouses more vastly warehouses
           more stately warehouses more stately vast   a man needs more space    a man needs more space
           than a garden       a man needs to become a woman to get his rib back               then everyone
           would have lips there'd really be something to say      but everyone became birds but the ocean
           shut down

Off Delaware off Philadelphia off Rt 95          concrete scaffolds what were once shipyards off the black
           shore

Take the veils one by one take the veils like artichoke leaves take the veils dipped in butter take the last
           veils take the veiled sun take the radio veil take the veil take the veil the veil the veil the veil the
           veil the veil the veil  keep saying it   it makes everything the same

Caw say crows cross caw  (moan the lonely)

salt season tastes ocean her tears    this more

 

Lot's Wife Explains

the options:
            1)   I could live forever
            2)  I could die

this is what melancholy
this is what attachment
this is what desire
this is what thirst
this is what listless
this is what mourning
this is what memory

I am yours death

nothing could have kept me
            from looking back
not more spring times
not more fruit
even among the burning

 

Lot 's Wife and Orpheus

The trigram:
                    before completion
            if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing
            gets his tail wet in the water
            nothing would further

because it was not yet spring
because luck was not on its side
because the ice was thin

a mistake:             the air tastes salt
or

surely being love allows one

it was a place I loved
            (not the sin not the pain not the treachery not the torture)
            each of us
            if being with you

beyond the bar

 

            no passaran

 

gravity:
            why is it called gravity
            why did it pull an apple down
            why did you eat it

the fiercer sun

not fate
not pride
not disobedient
not woman
pulls you
pulls at your clothes
tears your arms
legs
your skin in shreds
salt pollen
blood on the rocks
strewn

towards

 

Lot's Death

I

I had always
          wanted to die             like this:
                     lying amid grass and rocks

the sky forever
         a subtle black dispersed towards
the north
         the clouds a harder white

I followed God up the brown ridge
         no footprints             so from one bush to the next
lines can always be drawn
         I was looking for a shape
something over the hill

At the border I was told a rib was required
         this was difficult I am not my body's master
things break even in search of God             listen
            a lost season                     a whale pierced
at some time        the vault of night too

I have been leaking                   this is God's way

How many breaths since then?

slowly I will         become
            a salt stain here
            a gravel

too subtle to taste

what's left of sun

aromas             my cheek bone

its own surface

II

sky: fog towards gray
clouds leaving   always leaving
I still want to play           I am still
   breathing          the leaven of heaven
my body a meal

I asked to be laid under the sky
         this last business
seeing the sun    or not
         world still rises in color
its still rising

condolence of symbols
         like a guttering flame
a flock   tense

inside the doorway vowel
         her thrush fount

a splashing

 

 

 

back to issue three

 

 

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