Poems

Manifest

So you´re one too. Quantify effect. The kingfisher´s blue foregrounds against
the yellow-brown of winter forest. The train does not hesitate to penetrate a grass
fire, air full of cinders.


Junkies in the snow in Madison Square Park. gSo it wasn´t his kidneys going
off.h Songs of a roomful of antique clocks. The first crocus, purple by the fountain.


White cat wends its way between the legs of the chair. Rain centers the body.


Festival of Unfinished Projects. Hybrid as elegant as the First Lady herself.
I´m in line for the bathtub next.


One page resume, mid-day nap. Flicker of a big truck behind the pine trees´
branches.


Gauze curtains, room full of shadows, mildew in the doilies. She bounds up the
stairs, three steps at a time. The elevator settles before it halts.


These leafless trees, brooms stuck in the earth. Rain-soaked clothespins, damp
on a line. Sentence is the instant at which integration halts. Spoon scrapes a bowl.


Regressive parallelism intimates mock narrative. Submarine´s deck is made of
teak.


Cabbie snaps the meter on. Seven is dark orange. In the basement, the
washingmachine agitates the dark. A finch is at the feeder.


Natural light of afternoon on the stairwell. Chain from the mailbox to the
brick of the porch. Glove´s fingers stick from jacket´s pocket on the rack.


Just so many leaves desert the tree. Number joins these statements, kneeling
on the rug to discuss needlepoint.


Life here on the axis of combination ceases to have been a projection. Her
collection of seashells sits upon the keyboard. Coalcars shake thru the forest at
sunset.


Post-nasal. Dried leaves of the avocado plant´s neglect.


Pre-prerevolutionary. Lexus is our program, calling for the abolition of
paralegals.

Abolishment I heard. Attach a rider. Set aperture. Mark.


Any conjunction denotes a caesura. Gulls dip mid-flight into the valley. Big
sun sizzles & spits.


My voice appears as an average, new leaves circling the plum tree´s branch.


More about this later. Empty suitcases await their return to the cellar. The
chalk inscriptions on the blackboard from the previous class are left there to
haunt you. My cat comprehends recrimination.


Overt hinging. Bug on the paper with no respect for these lines. Hose nozzle
that shoots like a pistol .


Whose intestines reject process. Connect.


Down the street elliptical window locates stairway in the interior of that
house. Fragments of Spanish through an open door. Subdivision skylights
reflect the sun.

(Ron Silliman. Manifest. La Laguna: Zasterle, 1990. 7-11.)