NOAH ELI GORDON
from THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER
Morning
orchestrates its little engines—
residual truth, frightening
rain
a leaf
shaking with yellow jacket
liftoff
It’s a deafening
sound drives through
sincerity, its armored trees
& sad insects
Who’d want to move
from the particular?
Clouds shapes
themselves judiciously
go to ghost windows
I’ve lived every
So programmatic
& unsunned
// oil inertia //
// honey inertia //
// nerve endings & string
//
An accomplice to
thirst is gracious
***
Okay,
so can a bird elicit real ambient beauty
will me a capable compulsion machine
flipping the difficulty switch, high-pitched chatter
to ward off carnivores or saying a little extra
in case it won’t pass the incubation period
Who’s smashing
atoms on a cyclotron
shows infinite
reductions beyond a long green afternoon lakeside
just so momentarily
leveled by rain clouds dabbed on to cover a mistake
Unaccountable
lust begins unseasonably, striking
a chord into balcony ambiance
Better
keep where it fell, a brittle lookout tower
subtle acuity of someone who’d spend the day in war paint
***
Bind
& link the rooster thinking
a protracted present can’t keep
the characters straight
Cliff-Noted
Infamous Death
Sun
Making a Color Wheel of Oil Spots
There
were dragonflies over the pond
Like
the rooster puts words behind my eyes
&
calls it more a mouth than speaking would
Does
this window have a name?
Yes
Will
you sing it?
Hush me
***
Gutted
architecture, global compliance
The
first to the finish line
is always first to the finish line
Gratuitous
self-perpetuating publicity
Eight
weeks in broken collarbone
&
aesthetic tendencies instead of ideas
Proof that one’s
voice at very least is wanting
contact, has a pedestrian
flair, terribly mistaking
crows for consciousness,
the surface for vapid paint
a house for a
sarcophagus, a bed for a life, your white shirt for mine
blue for blue—obedience
is an awful word I think to get lost in
Rooster
talking a museum out of its eternal monologue says
“Sometimes
all a stone does is eating”
***
Nebulous
space between next week
& that line of trees amounts to the
ball-chain
my mind can’t help but drag
What
emerges is hope for something to sink these doctored teeth into
A
divination unaccustomed to cracked walls, strips of paint
about to voice other states the sky doubts
like a windup turtle on a wooden table knocks over a cork
& I’m in love
with impossibility for its dynamic body
or simply shaking
grit from a shoe
wears through the
pedestal beneath
notes that amounts to nothing when nothing
erases as well as a name
So
story gathering in the corner shivers a bit, rights itself, wipes off cobwebs
How
long does it take to muster that kind of attrition?
***
Thought
vaccine
Thought
collapse
Before
I died I was a thief now I’m a head of state bored of full talking
Death’s
a touch-me-not trigger
constellates around the rooster
Boring
as a canvas to a waterfall, a splotch of red
to equations lifting a helicopter
apologetic penis, don’t try to make me
one of your machines
Who
said it?
Him or me?
If
suffering pronouns are only words
I
must be a ghost of it
***
Collecting
discharge decomposition carries
dangling a carrot in front of a theoretical mule
something akin to startup fervor, sweat & its saltlick altar
ominous rust on an ice pick, the impromptu ballet in a
palmist’s index finger
tracing a line I might as well rely on
Can you believe
this humming anonymous light?
He thinks the light
is anonymity
broken against an
electron, smeared with a magpie’s tail feather
cast on a sheet of
orange vellum pasted inside a brown leather book
A cricket’s ankle
is not fragile to the cricket
Dab it there
Good Good Morning has nothing to do with sun
***
you are you & me
& him & she & rooster’s blemished
lexicon baffling myself
beside myself in selfish hyperbole
you are you & he
& me’s a she with boy parts for a girl’s
part in rooster play
affections always publicly masked to
mistake him mistaking her
instinctively tame history you
are you & me &
him & she & rooster’s flushed red standing
feathers stand for outmoded
chivalry yes sir I’m madam
to a hen’s dogma of
danger-chuckles receding like consummate
you & you are him
& she & I’m stuck a fraud to think in
dignity gives rooster back
his sickly stupid gaze you are you
& me & him
& she & the rooster’s aggressive wonder wanders
austere horizon hopes to
say wake again with the world in
your mouth salvaging
prude armor of a pride encased by lesser
speech with louder reach
so go faithful straight’s a human fate