JOE FLETCHER

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Joe Fletcher's poems are densely populated with characters and narratives, romances and certain kinds of impending acts of violence (threatening nothing so much as cliches of mind and inactive inertias of cant and boredom). They might be said to operate or breathe inside some other bands of reality, Fletcherdom we might call it. Each poem is as logically strict as any Poe or Borgesian exercise, aiming direct inquiries into logic's limitless flexibilities. Fletcher's imagination matches up perfectly in uncannily surprising ways with our infinitely limitless human desires. These poems strike me as heroic acts of imagination, rich and readably curious.

--Dara Wier

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THE FOUR RIDDLES OF THE SPHERES

They press a sponge to the hot teeth of a saw.

Their ladies cock their ears to the ocean's blue

thunder as they finger petrified coral chunks.

Their bodies: sweating flesh pumps.

Sunshafts spill through gaps in the twittering canopy.

A muskmelon is lifted from summer's loam

as a heron gurgles from beneath a hut-on-stilts.

They have sons plucked into swelling infantries.

One leaves, strong with grain,

like a demigod beneath his helmet-plume,

with a lance bright as a June lake.

He shakes a rattle filled with rice and

on his shoulder a bird perches, its beak

painted blue. He is the ram

for whom divinities hunger.

The jungle is reflected in his eyes.

Their toil is tributary to prosperous feasts.

Their children descend slopes

waving shards of igneous rock,

their skin smeared by crushed peonies.

They improvise games in the moon-checkered forest,

hats tilted rakishly toward the hills.

The hills gleam like nickels.

Vibrant insects leap in shallow arcs through bamboo.

They roast them over burning sackcloth.

The elders become unraveled by laughter

at a visitor's confusion over a riddle.

Then the night foray to the waterfall.

They drink.

It is how to get out of this world

and enter a new sphere of logic

with surprising associations and consequences.

Night finds them dressing imagined wounds

or stringing necklaces in the dusty squares.

Their madman wanders the streets,

directing absent traffic with a doll's head in his fist.

He sleeps in the vacated sentry booth.

Do they feel the speed of the sun-blasted earth?

Do they suffer?

Do they tire of the trance

conjured by the bone-beaten calabash?

What could shatter their enchantment?

An equinoctal moon swings over their corn.

Caravans of oil are sabotaged on international roads,

beside a cliff slickened by nocturnal showers.

A signalman is found on the pier,

his tongue ripped from his head.

Sand clogs their equipment.

Their tanks are empty—lichen spreads on the undersides.

A girl drums on them with two tide-smoothed sticks,

her dress singed from sleeping too close to the fire.

They push crates of smoky fruit to the strand.

Dawn whitens the east.

NO ONE HOME

I have asked not to have to take supper with the others. When they knock, I sit still, despite the wafting odor of russet potatoes simmering in curry sauce and a rack of lamb being basted in a brick oven, despite the fact that my stomach lunges toward these scents like a leashed terrier. They knock for a while. They lower their mouths to the keyhole and plead with me, then snicker and jostle each other, then hiss insults and accusations, each punctuated by the striking of my door with an open palm so that it rattles in its latch. Then they return to begging me somberly to come out, to show myself, they confess their desire for my company, lavishing me with praise. Often, when this fails, they perform a decrescendo trudging in place to simulate their walking away from the door and descending the spiral staircase to the banquet room. But I know they haven't left by the alcohol-laced breath I smell leaking through the cracks in the jamb, and often one of them is betrayed by a bodily noise. I remain stock-still. Then there comes a final slamming into the door, as if one of them had thrown his entire weight into it (and they are not small men), and they depart in a flurry of conversation and laughter. I sit, measuring minutes by the sinking of my candle shaft. Cautiously I rise and feel the frequencies of my room filling me, all the conduits rushing with secrets. I am in all corners at once. Then I lift my window and the night spills in a cool and fertile wave. I hear crickets chewing among the stalks, worms shifting the soil for the earth's cold sleep. I let myself down and wade barefoot through dew-chilled grass. I stand in the street and look at the house—how different seen from the outside, its gables silhouetted against a froth of stars, window-sockets sheathing the inner furnishings in darkness. My room regards me, a stranger. Cornfields swell with wind. Swift wingflaps sound from barn rafters. I hear the stomp of a hoof on brittle turf and feel the planet shift slightly in its orbit. I approach the front door and rap loudly, thrice. I hear their many footsteps race down the long hall toward the door. They throw it wide, shouting a welcome in unison. I enter, greeting them. My voice is a mask. Behind it is nothing.

METAPHYSICS AND TYRANNY

The sun is delight.

Then it's night.

Everything returns to its cavity.

I float on thoughts.

It will be cold soon and no

longer will the moist vines

shelter our wine-drunk union.

I enter evening cloaked in centuries.

I perform backflips for the crowd.

Who will kiss death from their eyes?

They take a little milk, a little meal,

and soon the coins are jangling again

in the acrid air of the gaming room.

A rude wind knocks my marionette frame.

Stars flicker in puddles: black inkwells.

Night pours into the top of my head.

A face is tattooed on my face—

when my eyes close, his open.

He's looking askance. We take turns.

My river girl falls asleep to a moonlit harper.

For an uncertain time we are beautiful.

Our bodies move through each other—

if not, reptiles spawn on the mind's

parched plain. Autumn drains into lakes.

Fish thrust blindly. Let the spiders weave.

I wash my thoughts.

Where is the path?

There is room in my tent for many.

I smell the distant harvests,

the approach of forests.

I am the fist god drives through days.

RIVERLAND

The castle was low and flat and sandstone and windowless. A few blinking antennae and lightning rods jutted from its slate roof, but the lightning rolled in gnarled balls miles behind me, illuminating the ragged sycamore line wending along the river. It was almost dawn and I waited at the oval door, swaying on my shaky thighs, humming my mindless little roadsong. Weary merchants were preparing for market: squeal of axles, pound of stakes, and the eager prying open of crates of food. Weaving through the bustle I spotted an enormous Moor, turban’d and chewing on a minty root that stained his teeth orange. He was pushing a wheelbarrow in which a legless midget was sitting. The midget’s lower parts were wrapped in a rust-colored swaddling, so that it looked as if he were half-emerged from a chrysalis. Against his chest he held the skull of a saber-toothed cat, which he gently stroked. His little beard waved in the breeze and he had his head thrown back and was singing: “Hey-ho, the Riverland! To the Riverland let’s go!” I hailed them and they stopped. The Moor reached around and lit a cigarette in the midget’s mouth, who, with a glazed look in his eyes, murmured: “It will be rain tonight.” “How does one enter the castle?” I inquired. The two exchanged a glance. “The castle has been taken,” the midget replied, “there is nothing inside.” “But I have a message for the king,” I said, troubled. “The king,” he said, “is speaking.” I narrowed my eyes at him: “Where is your crown?” The Moor reached into the swaddling and withdrew the midget’s sex. Its tip was capped in iron, inlaid with a few scratched, smoky jewels. I leaned forward and whispered into the king’s ear. He nodded. The Moor lifted the wheelbarrow handles and I turned to depart. I heard a thunk beside me. I looked down to see the blade of an ax plunged into a stump, having sliced the neck of a white chicken.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW

The man who lived here before me

smoked a pipe. He had a collection

of pipes, in fact, which he kept in a glass

case illuminated by a red bulb,

which swung when the wind rushed

through the shrapnel holes in the wall.

I can't say I approve—the thought

of the smacking sound of his lips

on the pipestem makes me want

to hurl a crabapple at his imagined

presence. He probably had a special

blazer that he donned during smoking

hours, as he assumed the posture

of a flush-faced empiricist after

an abundant plate of scampi.

But I smiled when I heard he was also

a falconer and that he had names

for each of his boots: Gunther and

Shestov. He read at night strapped

to a harness suspended from the ceiling.

His wife would absently rock him

with her foot, adrift on the staticky waves

of AM radio. And when, in the closet,

I found the statue of the African king

fashioned from corn husks, I began

to forgive him for the stain he left on me.

I stood at the window and sniffed

the sweet air that he once sniffed. When

it rained at night I ran naked into the fields

of hyssop and sheep laurel—as I heard

he once did—my braided ponytail

thumping my back. I heard he once

strangled a boy in Queens who mocked

his stride—which was likened to that

of an agèd Saxon king with one stiff knee.

And I snorted with laughter so that a black

cloud leapt from my snuffbox when

I discovered his drawings in a hamper

in the basement—one was of a shirtless

man brushing his teeth in front of a mirror,

in which was reflected not him, but

a griffin rendered in the style of Hans Arp;

another was of a baby triceratops

weeping on a cracked plain. I began

to wish he were here, so that when

February rattled the windowpanes

and snowfruit dropped into the frozen crick,

I could lay my head on his stomach

as he spoke to me in a voice that sounded

like an oboe being played in an empty

gymnasium. And when I got sleepy

I would tug at his little goat beard.

NECKFACE

Frost flowers across the trestle girders.

No deer creeps through the scrapyard

to lap at the oily river fringe. Sky

pulses with aircraft, and in the anonymous

towers: a mindless communal plunge

into sleep, a fleet of a million beds

linked by mercurial fibers of dream,

drifting above the diesel-dark concrete

as tomorrow’s food—shrinkwrapped

in refrigerated trailers—comes rumbling

through the evacuated streets.

That’s when he clambers through the man-

hole and ascends from the network of

tunnels thrumming with the squealing

passage of battered gray trains that beat

between their termini like headless pistons,

driving the city upward.

He ends in a smooth knob of flesh

draped over the spine that juts a half

foot above his broad and able shoulders.

There his face is put: a wide mouth

crammed with teeth just above his

clavicles; two milky and ovular eyes

drift above his upper lip; no nose—

at the apex of his neck, pointed up

to the moon tipped like a dented shell,

two nostrils are drilled. His breath is

not a friendly breath, but what of it?

He works alone. He hears through

his nostrils. His neckface doesn’t

swivel—he has to twist his torso

to look around. The rest of him

is strong like you, his feet and hands

are bare, the better to grip, baboon-

like, the fences and structures.

In one hand he carries a bucket

of crimson paint. When he needs

two hands he grips the bucket

handle with his teeth. Thus

he scrambles through the night

city in search of a surface.

There it is. He pauses. In the distance

there is a faint metallic knock as

someone is killed. From the canal

a foghorn blasts. He closes his eyes

and mouth and dunks his neckstump

into the bucket. Then he rubs his apex

against the wall according to his design.

After each stroke he spurts wet paint

from his nostrils. When you stop

hearing that sound you know it is

accomplished.

At dawn he’s gone.

HERMES

Occasionally I glanced at the stars, but most of the time my head was covered by a sack of black cloth. It smelled like it had once contained plums. I followed a dog. Panting, it licked my hand and brushed against my bare legs when I began to lag beneath the weight of the sky; when I stopped at a creek, it nudged me toward a footbridge. I never saw the dog, but I imagined it to be white. I called it Hermes. Sometimes it would rush, barking excitedly, into the lush and complicated meadows of the night, and I would sit, legs crossed, head bowed, fingering some wet twigs or grass blades. The earth smelled sweetly of crumbling leaves. I heard corn husks rustling in a balmy and imperial breeze, somber and freighted with nostalgias. The birds made no cry, but I knew they were there, in the deep forest pockets, absorbed in post-harvest meditation. Then Hermes would return, sometimes with a walking stick in his teeth, which was useful in the hills (and which I always seemed to lose—to set against a farmer's stone wall, or, during playful moments, to throw into a body of water just to hear the splash). Sometimes the dog returned leading a young girl. Then he'd trot off. The girl would loosen the drawstring and remove the sack from my head. I accepted the food she had—usually bread and cider sharp with fermentation. I would show her my watch and try to speak as I had once heard men in cities speak. She must have been unused to seeing a grown man's bare legs and, I admit, they often look strange to me. So far away, so clumsy (my right leg was stronger than my left). And yet, all they've done for me. . . With my head exposed to the night, I would soon grow weary. The girl would wait, bemused, for me to drift off, which I did. After a dreamless stint at the riverbottom of sleep, it would begin again—Hermes would press his cold muzzle against my bare heel and my eyes would fly open inside the sack (the girl had re-tied it while I slept and crept off into darkness). We would set out. Sometimes I sang. Then the thing I feared happened: Hermes ran away and didn't return. I waited for some time and even called out, though I realized it was a bad idea. Finally I stood and faced the place where I imagined the moon to be floating in a soft yellow haze. I said, solemnly: "How tedious to see life as a series of losses ending in death." And with that I went my way. Of course it's now more difficult without Hermes. I come across people and I am not ashamed to ask them for help, and they help me. But I can tell by their tone that they are impatient and distracted. One man, a coal miner I think, cinched my sack exceedingly tight. And sometimes it rains. But I push on, feeling for the path with my stick, eager for the work to begin.

ANTENNA

Let us return to the discipline.

Let the melons be halved and set

to drink the sky's cool milk.

A leaf is born.

Brigades advance, bearing in their flesh

the recipes for unborn cities.

Let the first word speak, shatter

the glinting spyglass of the one

on the far hill, sheltering in larch.

Is he traveling? Is he resting,

like a sloth? Is that a skin of ice

on the lake, or are winds gathered

elsewhere, rattling the sign of a pawnshop,

or streaking skies with turbulence?

Philosophies unhinged from life

snap in migratory winds like worn

streamers on a flagpole in the desert.

Listen. Watch for what comes out

of cracks in the tundra, out of

the sink in the demolished villa, out of

you, who want so badly for things

to be stirred, for breath

to rise to your brow and to break

in the salt-spray of an idea.

Is the politician alive? His name

is branded on the small of his back.

In his final hours he cried out

to passing bandits. Should we

dig him up and kill him again?

Sharp-winged landfill birds careen.

A sniper practices on a frog.

Let us enter the mud. Let us wait

for the furtive prophecy blown

from southern swamps, where

a theater presents The Worm in the Goblet.

Does the day's lust end?

Rains rub the land. Truth slips.

Let us touch, in awe, the stem of thunder,

the stone wheel rolling through meadows.