TURNING

MARK LAMOUREUX

WINTER

This winter that comesas an ancestral curse from

those mollified ancientswho open their mouths

to moan & only the bonesof Indians emerge:

They who even in the twilightbegan unmaking you,

who are the murmur ofblood on withered leaves.

This winter that diesIn a column of cold rain,

drops that pound eventhe crystals of the Alpine

snow to the dust of ice—which is water, to which

nothing shall return. Isnot born again, that which

feints toward oblivion,the jewels of the skyline

seen from the halted train withbitter coffee that is the blood

of children.

WINTER

As sure as my song will falldead upon the dumb earsof this people, as sure asthe moon is the whoreof light, tucked away intoa lead-lined box, the lastemitter; such as that shedgrace across the land like a hotstorm, bending the wheat in two—the wheat made of metal, thewheat made of glass. Assure as each flower will fallon my knife, such as whatis etched upon the hilt, assure as what wakes in the orangemorning & perceives: this polis,this people, this unmooringof such a ship as will carry usto where we are going,

where others have goneto know, at least, thatthe flashes in the skywere over so quickly:uniforms, dust, agency—the center of an amoebaslipping through blood,coins heaped & heapedupon soil molecules; weare always a displacementin the water, a beginning& an ending to those that recordwith number or word—upon stone upon glass uponice that splits into sand &

motion. Where will we go?Where does the weatherplace us? Who gavethis drifting featherto the wind?

This is the wordthat will shed its skin,like a city that twists &recasts its streets—the insect of a graffiti-glyph shadow twistingthrough a frame of lightupon the corrugated subway floor.Runnels of refuse, the strickenshards of the usualcast-offs: manifold names,shifting & blinking:Athens Berlin Manhattan—photons on the water,a sphere that rolls uponthe dipping floor of a cloud.

WINTER

Rain constellationson the windshield are the wrong stars.

Wherever I point my prow recedes from me.

Comfort in maritime imagery landlocked life locked in place like frozen ports, distant green shores, alienbeaches: the life I did not lead

gives me some kind of cold comfort.

WINTER

Even inwinter

the tree bleeds,cracking

knuckles like geodes—where I would live

as a child,at the bottomof the world,

with lizards &bones, slick

limestone a monolith’skiss. A shape

in a nebula hugeIn the gateway, a door

that opens outinto another room:

it is a hushedacre, long ontime,

where the greyearth redoubles.

A streamof bitter ichor, wherethe animals

are sick.

An instancetilled, a rainof ink & salt& orchids droop,dripping black slip

from the cornersof their mouths.

WINTER

Disaster teacheshumility, arrogance

a fleshy fruit;its converse,

a balloon filledwith dust that gets

in my teeth,under my finger-

nails; what godsmiles on this?

Weaned on water,why must we?

Numberless, liketiny fish, all

the letters inall our words

once etched, nowsmoke though a sieve.

Black ink ona black stone,

smooth & cold &wet like a mouth

or a tear.

SPRING

The leaving trainsa body too much in motion

looking for some grasswhen there is no grass

to be had. The agonyof a mockingbird &

truck honks. Iron escapewind-struck like

a tuning fork— the drum ofan empty trashcan in

traffic spun clockthen counter-clock-

wise—a plastic headshaking: no no no no.

SPRING

A pinwheel of sparks cast into the false silence—sinister in its insincerity, into the city night—feral in its incompleteness: Never a gram of emptiness, never a glimpse of static,

plastic assaults even the EKG of forsythia, pentacles of daffodils, the petal- suckered octopus arms of wan cherry limbs.

They chatter on trains like gulls yet the song means nothing,

the song is the marred heart of the silence, the bent lines of the inept maul of oblivion—living

as though alive, as though day follows night, clattering, disintegrating, not even these buildings can still.

SPRING

Potentiality-petaled, the hub of a moment &

the spoked halo of its destination, what could

might will have been— a morass of such

blooms, wallpaper or dresspattern, morning glories

on a chain-link fence, hammeredby rain or pierced

by a hound’s tooth,garlands fall from the departing

spirit, tendril-braidedwicks of ectoplasm—it loops

a corner & then there was nothingthere at all, nor will there be,

not for all of the dagger- mouthed roses in all the garden.

SPRING

Think of Hopkins’ shook foilwrapping pastrami on rye,

the sign on the door says:“LUNCH.”

Steinway Street, 6AM—No grandeur:

wind-swollen plastic bags skitterpavement in arcs, as though alive.

I do likewise.

SPRING

Pigeons writhing behindthe metal Columbus hawk,

as with all animals hard to tellif fighting or fucking, their

wings scraping stone with thesound of firing stove

gas or an umbrella burstingfor rain. Like the statue

& surrounding square theyare cast in veins of grey—

their patina like lowlymarble—it is ubiquity & the city

that makes them ugly,likewise with us, the city

what makes grey base, thatequanimous shade, pigeon-

holed—us also, cluckingunder the grey sky

but without wings.

SUMMER

White portents in the sky,a vision of a hand without fingers,

the future hot upon the concreteshroud, gum-stains the after-

death birthmarks of the corpse ofthe street. Hey buddy,

can you spare a dollar?The telegraph of the clicking

claws of the prancing animals,ground down & dulled. We are walking

into the wet envelope of whatever comes,a city doubled onto its own gone past

like the husk of a pillbug undergarden wall stones. No crop from

this rock garden: arbor of steam,Crown Gall on the fruit of

inertia. Quivering towards the doorspinning like a pulsar, each pause means

someone in front of you has fallen.

SUMMER

Sleep like the thunderclap that won’t come.

Thunderless lightninglike the people on the avenue,

bodies & faces withouthistory, sentences without

words—beads on astring of beads or a tendril

of rain, like these, heavy,that give everything

a sheen, every thingimposing its form upon

the otherwise indifferentvectors of the curtain

of the rain. I have not thoughtof beads for a very long time,

have not thought of the soundof a body breaching a bead-

curtain for an even longerspan—how it sounds

something like rain, but nothinglike thunder. Certainly not

the thunder that shook the houseas a child. I think of my books

often. They are dead, having beenwritten; in some ways dead

before having lived, not unlikethe storm that did not happen;

this heat is the shape of itsabsence, the evidence

of the thing that wasn’t, thatworld that remains, regardless,

that is & would still have been,in the same way it is

& would still have been if youor I had not been born, either.

SUMMER

Grease & ice creammelt on pavement asinkpens bake

in kiosks. Miragesoff flagstones lift likeskirts, no breeze to jiggle

trees. The people suffer,yet leavesseem to flutter like banks

& their notes, reverseglissando, thingsthat threaten; yes,

our time is over, payit no mind—skies clot, grey& spit UFOs

& ball-lighting at us, ball lightningto chase us down the stairs &into the bunker or the Post Office,

jaggedy downthe street like a breastbonesweat-bead. Our dynamos all

fail—crest curls backinto trough, the lip of the shorerecedes, sucks

at sandy feet & staticshells that appearas though moving.

SUMMER

As rare as summer ice that sets off all the car alarmsalong the block, a million heartsickCatherines rapping at the windows. Would thatthe hail could really steal awayall the cars. This keeping inside the people; the stormis my one friend & as such expires so quickly,shakes the blossoms off of stems & blasts the shit fromoff the curb.

SUMMER

Summer’s great blue sky-eye, theother one green of the skyline trees& its third cracked athletic track red oneawait the city’s glaucoma, weepingthe screaming sapphires & rubiesof the cop cars that skirtthe Columbus statue, where saidnever walked, could not imagine summera $20 tuna sandwich above a Boteropenis gone gold from touching, pregnantwith its own demise, cannot surpassthe autumn-crone, cannot succorspring, naughty child, who goes onshrieking in winter gardens.Summer in the center of Time-Warner Center, garlanded by chlorinetoruses, sees manhole coverspop skywards, acne burstingin the hot darkness of blackout.

The amusement park crashesdown into a pile of pink dust,dusk my father’s white hairstriking the empty coaster carlike the drum of a ship. Rocketat half-mast, plaster & chicken-wire,never even really got offthe ground.

FALL

Avert your eyes fromthe fruitage of summer’scold upended breastsin a Waterhouse poolof blooms, palms vadaramudra, fecundto be erased as root-vegetables shriekfrom their soil, the bowerfills with apples. Do notreach for them. Thisis the large sleep: the barebranches of the trees, the trees’lack of mind. The river will stumbletoward the swathe of bluesleep ‘till at last the sunices forever, corpse-creased & everything you thoughtyou knew turned outtrue, now go to bed,tomorrow will bethe same as today &yesterday was.

FALL

Searchlight-spot huge whitemoon in the blue morning,September balm withered—treessanguine, give upin the thick haze. Throughfactory windows beside the train seeinverted glowing buttercuplamps light who knows what.Woman in the seat oppositemetronomes, syllables spurtfrom her lips like the rail shrieksas light-flowers are prizedopen by the dawning day,

September, never any restfor the dead, 6AM the moonsteals away, guilty. Summerdrops down to the curbwith the illegals waitingfor some work.

First Edition, #___ of 100 printed & hand-sewn in Palo Alto, California November, 2008

Made for the 2008 Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv.

Cover by Caleb Anderson. Design, layout, photocopying and sewing by Bronwen Tate.