These poems first appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of Fence.

TWO POEMS

THE LILTING HEAVY

1
What words haven't, and then the mouth.
Perspicacity the book is riding
Over heavy plains, over heavy plains--
And filler writhes where the stanchion is--

They hate that. But wherever it grows,
Hum there. A sack of fruit;
Also the planets. Stars. I came over
And the wind blew and I had a wind

Blow. I had whatever wind.
I had knives to stick, now the hands
with linked thumbs simply
Devour what the end made of a bird,

Of her fingers, of her fingers.
Here I had a story but the wind.
It blew. Something of a heavy.
I had whatever.

2
In the office of the standpipes alone.
In the weather, in the box.
In the standpipes alone.
In the box.

A feather.

3
So I said to him I said
Over in the gallery I said
The maligned is forever
In the office of unbestable dreams

She said I heard you right
she said I heard you better
In the office of unbestable dreams
There is a boxer;

And his ears are tight and even fatter
Then soupe de l'egalitaire
From unlistening
And his hands are swatters

He's right he said
You're right she said
Swatters
An arm's length
He just stands there and hits

4
Perspicacity the lugubrious joint
I have ever been silenter
On the stair, on the stair.
The lugs are getting brighter.

They take hands full of hair
And lay them down
And we see a picture there.
We see a picture there.

"Waters are made of wine.
They smoke the glass.
Glasses, graveyards, climates, lines-
We have henceforth been educational."

Yet he moves he moves/ what
Other name? I gave hands full--
In the center is a little eye
And a guy stands in it.

_____
A SCISSORS

Figaro,
Heironymous;
these are two
as constructed
and will sleep
as one of us--

as animals,
all blue-tip-feathered,
dragged
as one of us,
as mouths
across their ample beds--

They weep
as one of us
and kill
and drink
as one of us
They act
and think

and sour
and heap
and reel


Copyright © 2006 by Greg Purcell

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