Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer

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LINED JEANS

Beautiful spillways move silt through the clay-filled toes.
You’re dreamy and I’m dreaming.
South of the tree line is a nesting pair of ducks.
They sleep in the cold open water.
The first stop on highway eighty-five is you.
Outdoors we’ll shiver.
Autumn.
Trucks careening northward from necessity
have thoroughly intimidated the pine forest into needles.
Breaking away without you seems a very simple matter of geography
beating out desire.
You’re Carolinas are together buttressed by geography and desire tunes
itself.
South of your driveway the cars weave.
The coldest part of you is south of your beloved imagination.
Knowing how constellations play out against mystical desires isn’t
helpful today because today Charleston, South Carolina wants me to walk
away with revolutionary pride.
Trees.
River bank receding.
The southern mindset seemed to welcome recessionists and when
Southerners welcome you you must recede into their disdainful
landscapes.
Lost colonies were found.
Strange that lost sense wasn’t mine.
Keep out of the kitchen unless you’re old.
Keep the old cars in garages.
Keep reminding me how.
South of here you’re pants flap in wind.
Today is filling quickly.
I called the game.
We won.
You never remember how sensitive your legs get
until you look down and southern winds stir them.

COWARD WITHOUT

Once ontologically speaking
my consciousness slipped to a plane
both realistic and cowardly.
Why am I explaining farm life using bigger words
than necessary? I’m an insecure farmer’s assistant.
My morning ritual would scare your college mascot.
When chores are completed by 7 AM
one may think one’s life into obscurity.
Peas carrots and lima beans.
These fortuitous legumes are causing each other
untold miseries which I will tell you about.
First: peas roll spastically.
Second: carrots stab each other and no one dares
stop it from escalating.
Third are the seemingly jocular lima beans.
What on earth do they think?
I’m just a factotum but my mother really loved farming.
She told carrots a story to calm them down.
The problem with my farm is the silence.
Mother’s preserves remind me constantly
to move them around periodically
but I can’t remember to.
All winter I braid the cords but the cords remaining
inside myself mean little when I’m so confused
and carrots are poking me and everything that I see
rolls like peas and lima beans smile threateningly through walls
of carrots’ grassy tops.
Never mind.
I’m riding this ox for charity.
I work out in leather but hugging myself
isn’t any fun unless I’m wearing your horses out.
Believe me, I’m riding myself into poverty but fortunately for poverty
I’ll pass out and never cause any trouble.
Chickens for pieces of chickens.
Wall Street employees please stand up and discard your dreams.
I’ll pluck anything that’s feathered.
That’s what I do, ask anyone.
I’m working on something secret.
It can’t be explained without first hoeing
and plowing and sowing and growing and anything.
It is overreacting to arrest anyone.
Leave New York alone.
Farm machinery floated above us when that twister came.
Hey you, getting drunk in nature’s right of Spring.
Getting home is harder.
Grow grow grow and Spring will never go overly hard.
Looking. It’s really about about that.
See meaning intrinsic inside alfalfa sprouting each day.
Go breathers and breathe.

TREES

Trees falling on to streams during nighttime storms
falling through the wake of lovely decay spinning.
Yellow stain’s growth on moss.
Cover the children with blankets.
Outwardly the vista.
Inwardly sewing patches.
The running water overwhelmed rushes.
Safely floating down stairs the orange wakes the children with
playfulness.
Night sends itself letters while tucking bushes behind hills.
Straw mending strong bales blown around earlier.
Deepness of Autumn explained by metaphor:
Why won’t my rocking horse?
The interesting layer disappeared and left evidence of communal
interest behind.
Know yourself or no one.
Slow parting canvases the field for lonely grass.
Circles appear.
They beg seeds attention and lay down in splendorous squares waiting.
Nothing can close the door.
Awake and go underground.
Remaining hidden you’ll remain socially purified and slip into your own
incantatory prelude which others believe to be diabolical but cannot
and will not hurt though they said so much.
Above yourself hawks contemplate what’s for ever going to appear.
Below.
Don’t run out the entire battery with breathing.
Flashlights fell into wooded quadrants shining until utility’s
replacement became apparently still necessary.
Leaves throughout history have always fallen significantly.
Candle hatchet burneth long.
Candle quill blanket now.
Despite tenuous winds and airy breaks time tipples toward a tender
falcon’s nest.
Outside the standard ways I sat quietly listening to the elks on radio
and saw clearly how cooks saw themselves in France.
Authority needs.
Authority must renew its lease before January.
Falling down the stairs.
Oranges float through walls and delight the children.
Gourds.
Squashes and pumpkins appear quiet tonight.
Wreathes wreathe and trees tremble.
Horses beneath admirals beneath ocean misted evening.
Don’t forget the trees canticle again.
It is not air.
Song bird.
Downy hilled Ohio opened for grass cuttings attack and know yourself.
Grass nosing against you thinks of me.
Later sleep will too.