Trash Nebula
Would you throw a ball? A stone cast, and all that, Into a small objective world?
So you were back then, Then you darkened in a pall, Only a chalk trace
Left on the earth. Fill in all the wilderness, Will you. I know:
Love me in one death.
This night-glazed invasion Underswept those with us And those against
(I can tell you, it was 4 to 1).
At the vacant center, Unleavened and leavened, Disks of scrap, skyward bright,
Following you— Those little bits of iron Ore, magnetized with songs of praise.
No, we were not satisfied.
Don’t be extinguished, Your house after all
Was a budding train Noontime and night.Even you stand With open eyes;
No it’s evening, Right? We could not
Deter you to cast The unused over the shoulder—
With salt it brings luck— But when were you going to tell me
Everything finally Ends up in the sky?
A Confession of Sorts
The grandmother-babbles Are hard to fathom.
What folly from that shorthand, The directions played, The herd thinned out.
Who made them then, When there is no wind left?
From childhood we looked out Into the softness of the world,
The remains though, were exhumed And entombed—every prophecy worms
Its way through the knots and gnarls (That’s where the scars come from).
And yes, Rosalie and I drank the sun In the chicken yard, then stopped
The fountain from spurting- Sputtering in the light.
A Very Messy Affair
Not a wonder, a high burden, but botanical, Perhaps more puritanical, even diabolical, collecting Shells, diadems, the exalted and exhumed.
Watch! Do you see the rabbit there, bounding In her grassy glee. The hound is in the woods; Where there is a witch who sleeps with her
Horse. Some fates are undeniably worse. See the flower crowns? In my grand- Mother’s inner eye, there was a fleck
Of something resembling broken glass, meanwhile, We were all leaning in, out of breath As she was, except in summer; not a wonder,
A newcomer living in heart’s central stone Among the high grasses. The fronds of this leaf Are more of those mute expressions, all
We have read in our solitude, in out anti- Pathy, all we have read in the dead, in dust, A flash of instinct, the eyes dart
Here and there, just like Emily and the rabbit And the sleepy witch and the broken Glass of my grandmother’s eyes.
Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, artist and musician. He has published 17 collections of poetry, including more recently, Einstein Fledermaus, The Little Book of Earthly Delights and A Brief Conversation with Consciousness. He is publisher and editor of MadHat Press and publisher of New American Writing. He lives on a farm in rural Western Massachusetts with his wife, Miriam, and their Australian Cobberdog, Emily Dickinson.