Barry Schwabsky

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IMMIGRANT

Certain days

I used to think of leaving

the East Country, now not even

a darting memory—just a hole in

the sky before which

grain elevators hang

nailed. I drank wine

of immoral bouquet: sea foam,

midday drizzle, ash of poppies, copperas,

mustard. Then I stopped arriving

and the eye-burn

stopped happening. Still the blind

sky stands out

anonymous

with birds

of raw meat. Breath

changes color. I call the window closer

but it won’t come. The eye yaws, flooded

with dreams of targets

and insomniac

sheets. A funeral

with interruptions:

“Organ, shut up!” sing the birds

before the stony minute turns its face

the other way round.

LITTLE ORANGE VENDOR

Does a star? I mean for

the minimum scene, the one

she puts in her sketches, this artist

who is from the interior

of never give the words

a second chance. Wide awake

main sleep, totemic

in underbrush, the color

that lost capacity to call

a world from certain traces

more substantially than spiderwebs.

BOT

You can cry until your eyeballs rust but
never break a sky
trussed in violet conversation

(your lucky couch professor)

pale conversation
where telephones keep ringing
to get me some.