ROBERT FERNANDEZ
Four Seasons Resort, Sharm El-Sheikh
VEILS
1.
draws the style
of the three yellow crowns
from the slit of
the mouth
the style of yellow
crowns
from an
upwelling of lashes
the flared lip of a
conch
from ponderous
bazaars
2.
in its uprushing and poised sails, the Moray
a little loaf of bread
falling into slices
of its own volition. .
.
lest in
crushed black
incense,
jasper and
rigorous sun
lest, aligning
in soft proportions,
extrude veils and
fires
FOUR
SEASONS RESORT, SHARM EL-SHEIKH
Red
fan on a train from Sharm el Sheikh
or
one in bright,
combinatory shelves of towels;
the other, dry banners
of sunlight and speed—
the cheeks shaved into a
veil. The sun, rigid
in its friezes says
this is a water of events—
momentarily
I fail—a smile, compulsions
of horns fluttering in
a suit—momentarily,
witness the drawing
of a duration
like a fan of
water uncrossed in the heart.
Gifted
firecoral breezeway—stretti
of
falling water.
Upright, that which by
necessity I will
clear away—the figure
and its rhythms
desperately put forth.
Sewn
license of a heart, other pale-
red firmament—there, sun
walking
in an infinity pool with
naked feet
there, futures,
zeitgeists of palms
that swallow and
lave, there,
the sea in its crinkled
introspection
of wilds, its maze and
bladders—
there,
or trumpets,
cream-white,
satin empathies,
each thing (all things)
massing in
untenable varieties of hands
that clip our
hysterical wills and roses,
retroactive
in the sea beside us.
TRACT
As
would be right to assume with any breakneck speed, there is clarity and sedition,
a tending to clarity as to a subset of laws governed not by fear but sensate
rails, laws of the white tooth, of the golden and the black dove, of capacities
bent inward and burning to hybridize. Quite a day to be
entombed in these cream-colored blocks. Wholly incapable of time,
casuistry, what of these intricately white pigeons chasing around in the
painted light, what of the delta that has been unjointed,
jointed by a rod like a thoughtful bridge? The mirrors of your veins unfold.
What you see in yourself is not presencing but tan
beads. A note to the extent your capacity does not extend past seeing, find the
wheel. The clouds are vibrant odds, their light in bridge and penetrative gait
neither part of a whole, nor whole, nor a gaze unlocking in an indelicate
intimacy. A suspicion that we are moving from fair to fair,
palace to palace. A suspicion in hot dust, that mandrills and silvery
omegas have begun spilling over their colossal argument of names.
RED
IBIS
Carved
down by wild sun—
Who
in mutual admiration
And
red planks,
Who
of anonymous gifts,
Transient,
baited by silver,
Turning
sleep-herds, beams
Of
capital, red ibis
One
tireless motion if not
To
eat then split across the wings:
Red
buoy, red life vests, red marble
Of
gates and cloisters turned in,
A
friar in the reef pursuing
Elements. While
baited,
We twilight.
While baited,
Leaven,
shrill and happy:
Saltwind cashing out on a bluff.
On
the perimeter, the wave
In
its uprushing and poised facets—
Translated, how soon. A margin
Call
of tides. Face, an exasperatingly
Fine grain.
Red ibis, salvage
Diver,
pin-clad countenances
Resolved in a threshing of veils.
EPITHALAMION
At once this dragnet of cousins
Whips its way into your presence saying
None
of them among us, it is a white
Pentacle on the court of
The tight filigree of your mind or your
Splashing around in, pandemonium
Of an azure graffiti inexpertly cut up—
And makes a weapon of furled hands,
I will walk, but my bones will carry
Ribbons of lead or, I will, like an
Acrobat, mill-headed in 3’s (3 blades,
3 hips, 3 tongues) answer to what comes
Before, what comes before? Eleousa,
Master of Dark Eyelids, eye opening
Like a fennel seed—you are generous
Or are you not—do you shore up and
Wink at the soul? What does the soul say
Other than, ‘my divorce from,’ ‘tan
But should have asked—“what do you
See?” The sun a sequence of fans, a bridge,
Only so exquisitely cabled as to make us
Still—shall we fall
Or travel between bridges
Among the robust, sane clouds,
A face cut from peat like a silver kite?
The sun, dancing in a phial, the initial
Memory of what it was to be born—
Doberman of a sere white universe—
To school out—the audacity of rising
Without name or color to new rooms,
New youth—fruitful, born singularly
To precise moments not in epiphany
But duration, as under new weather
We become, in action—receive—our
Bodies uncasked like umbrellas under
The flamingo-red
light of the racing day.