SESTINA 59%



Life events occur often enough.
He exits the scene, thinking swords
could not cut a sharper tuxedo.
Summer comes, and it is Atari.
And it is versions.
The hair of his girl spreads through

his hair, lying in bed and out through
the window. Their embraces last enough
time to be considered versions
of a good. He cries these silent tear-swords.
He feigns indifference at her worst Atari
mishaps. He reluctantly returns the tuxedo.

Because what is a summer without a tuxedo?
He thinks. What is a girl if you can’t feel through
her eyes the heat of an Atari
console? She sweats too little. He sweats enough.
Summer intenses until it is a kind of sword
factory following him in the streets. It spits versions

of itself into every glimmer, dub versions
toppling out of an original summer. Tuxedo
merchants stalk his dreams, prefaced by swords,
prefaced by banal levities. Awake! he says through
the gloom. Etc etc etc enough.



ELF DATE



Well, that happened. The city of wound-too-tight blankety-blanks left us alone. In my mind I was wearing cool shoes, but I looked down and flip flops. We awaited each other on the bench, quoting Joseph Ceravolo. I like to collapse you said. A body and even the blesses are / a nuisance of man’s / glory I said. We ran for the bus and the bus was whatever. The pull cord stop of our youth has been replaced by a strange tape push stop, we noted. You put your hand up my shirt and then you got your whole head up in there. Look, you said, I am not really an elf. I know, I said.



THINGS



  1. The lord.
  2. Couches with built-in reclining sections.
  3. Phil Collins.
  4. Little people hanging from the arms of big people.
  5. The breath before yes.
  6. The breath after.
  7. Every manager at every Burger King telling jokes.
  8.  

girlyouknowitstruesleeveback

  1. Boys beating boys at long division.
  2. Girls mapping castles on graph paper.
  3. Waves.
  4. Wow, waves.
  5. The decision to, maybe, never mind.
  6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRFujbYIcIY
  7. Only the bearded New York School poets.
  8. “…the galaxy named ‘Fangs.’”


MARTIANS



I hear you speak, O slight cinematic green, when late in my mysterious reading. Out of all possible fits I fit most violently when breath is continuous, arranging furniture shaped toward the extremer synonym. Syntagma aflutter, agog and googly I pound the ugly table. Some magic birds appear wasted and blind. That significant other I’m always declaiming won’t even enter the barn. You make a me that must pedal past the dub housing your sleazeball imaginary. I make of you the caress and the threat, always loose in the particulate city blackening no doorstep.

MICHAEL COMSTOCK