Bethany Wright
I
posit for you, congregation,
7
plates, 7 sacraments, not monuments
that
expect instead of remember.
Milk
bottles making milk the same way
mouths
mimic carols, and the doorbells
outside
doors. Nearly all things,
as
many petals in flush, as many
voices
flounced the drowning
of
Saint Lucid, the Clinical.
Shocking
paragliders,
their
hair tied back in buns, succumb
to
the winds and bring the words in.
The
words they bring: the harbingers
are
dispersed in ashes. So that each
hand
is
floating and grabbing at its favorite
letter. Soft servers lactate inopportunely;
more
words dribble out and down
the
front. Seated
over
the wing, my libel left
wavering,
flags down the bleeding echelon.
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No,
this is not the manifolder, a
sermon,
steep, or affliction-knowing
sleeve. I call the P.I. and the
P.I.
enters the one ear. The P.I.
fills
the fauna, the phoning
coronet,
a stir. We are amassing
a
dream culture not unlike
the
other, spiritual mutter. One
chart
shows a church.
The
other
is
stuck inside the one ear and the
other
is locked inside the one ear.
Who
but the minister leaps
from
the pulpit to the drum. When what.
Basking
away in the narthex is what:
the
next word. And the P.I. calls me
back.
ÒA
runway has been sighted
in
the formidable voice, pastor. Am I
to
scout it out?Ó ÒYes, scout it
out.Ó
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In
an ark, the soft speech -
In
a way, you hear me -
In
an arc, the soft seek -
In
a whey, and curdled/scattered mustard seed -
In
an arch, we echo -
In
waiting, we curtsy -
In
arduous, blank for me. In warring,
in weighing, in flood,
the
soaked ending. I am sad and sad
and sad
again. I am loud to be sad.
In
the ark, doves wave to me.
I
hear my own name in these colors.
In
the descent, a decent shift occurs or I throw up my
hands
and beg for it.
To
me let loudly - shake, shake -
a
verse to eat. Spare a room.
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Mollusk sous monument / Lift where
breakers dawdle, make a
largostrate /
Mourn your logos,
mithy plaster / Winnow
in the window, says
Chowder of the
Ferryman / Let a
stillborn whisk
away / Metanoia
asunder. Morn, make
a caster of your
season / Wither the desert
or the faster, I am
dying / Metastasis
sought the instruments
down, I am falling,
Daddy / WhatÕs the
influence / I am
wandering downy
finishing down the alley /
Without a last swoop /
Where there is doubt,
flourish / Shelf us
under / Gulp not,
dear sympathies, you
put us where
you want us / Make a
sailor and
sailer thru mixed
boundaries in flesh, if
you so choose / Like
an injury, pardon.
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If
I had larger cloak, I would cover
their
ears with the music of
the
spheres. Every time I merge
that
hill, I am winded, I lamented.
Every
day is wine and water.
Mountains
illumined from behind.
I
see a scorning face in tops
of
trees whose mouth is showing.
I
went
into
the caves and the bars and sweat
in
both places. I, myself,
collected. I reserve; I resolve.
Make
me a place in the making room
I
know you must have covered in red.
(Else
in vain. Else covered in
water. You spoke.)
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This, this hanging,
this thread, this familiar trigger, this
terrible enemy in the
crib. Should I play with a ball
like
this?
Once
per year the sanctuary goes
out
candle by candle. The dragon draws
in. Each goer tips
a
forehead. The dragon is partaken
and streaked into the
skins
of the street-facing door. Through
a colored window,
a
smattering of broken dragon limbs form hieroglyphs not
yet
deciphered.
I
fall groundward. Each darkness
incrementally
darker. The final mouth
full
of cotton. Rather gold.
Once
the sanctuary is empty, horses
clean
up the place and reminisce
about
the days before fire. Their
trembling
saddles wince where,
from
underneath the mantle,
honeyed
morals are ready, and surface.
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When
at last,
Prepare in me a
wound. Stain the grass
I sleep on. Congest my head with
rattles. Loosen my limbs. My field
overflows. Make a grid
of muscle that
I must mount, that I
must wound and
take and then
restore. Make this flesh
as much my own as my
fret, my
lengthy lust, my
hoarding. Prepare in
me a doubt that will
buoy only when
spent. Send me to Damascus, to the
molars. Smother or slight my slot, my
site, where I may find
pixels of heart
mingled with purse. Send me into the
coronerÕs office and
send me explaining.
Send me tied-up with a
wire hanging
from my sex. Send me
with my ribs
painted yellow. Send me an ache and
cause me to name it
before it aborts
in its cardboard box,
plastic thrashing.