29 November 2015

Something about the heat this year


by James Grinwis

Snapshot with Wolf

Wolf made of gems.
Wolf made of alligator scales,
pine wood, and gems.
Like a length of gristle,
a lanky cartilage, loveliness,
the wolf. A strand of grit
attached to bone, a heart made of
love-pulp encased in a boot. Something
about the heat this year, the way
it curdles the armpits
and the spaces between fingers,
other spots. Something about
losing the whole of one's work
because of an accident
and feeling no desire at all
to embark on it again,
opening the skull
to a fullness of missing.
*
Inside the wolf's belly,
it is warm: yellow adobe
covered with small, colorful sculptures,
Klezmer and Bedouin music,
the little booths occupied by,
in alternating time,
heavy drinkers, emaciated
insomniacs, desperate office workers,
pipe fitters, tea afficionados. Those with
massive schedules and those
with no sensitivity to such.
A little crate full of toys
occupies one corner,
on a shelf far above the others,
the old shotgun full of buckshot
which has not been used for years;
a museum piece, a lichened rock.
*
The landscape melts.
I am feeding on small things
scurrying along dusty canals in the landscape,
to become an appendage
of the wolf, placentally attached,
waiting for a sun spike
to nudge all the plants and stuff
up from frozen sleep.



From The American Poetry Review, November/December 2015.







No comments:

Post a Comment

No Anonymous comments, please.