SAMAEL’S LYCHGATE
By Joseph Harms
SAMAEL’S LYCHGATE
Debrided Let returned to New York once unrecognizable,
austere as hell, his lychgate rented for the week to pay
for it, rogating friend to friend who’d ask about his missing
wife then nightjarring from zenana to zenana pied
and piing, somaed, nights unslept or slept spiculed into
a new facsimile, the life they’d shared less than a watercolored
dream. Love reduced is a detective story. Cocted solved
solutey. Light so light it’s black. Back home he burned what leaves
he could and read the volitantes’ asterism, woke
bedmade unselved as rote and clung to that. To live in Would.
Negating bout the garden eschewed by rabbits even
Let would unclimb the trellissy holdfasts but not deracinate
rather feed them into moleholes. Commuted. Expelled. Pall-
Malled round the 22nd of each month, parhelion
nevernevered, missed missing…We would at times we would and then
we wouldn’t…The space the horror the forgetfulness the utter
lack of substance. Anchoritic ouroborossatisfaction.
The lychgate rent to own even…God beyond God…apolytrosis…
ROMA/MEIROTHEA: THE HEAVY HAND
Estranged the lawns aspersed, gazeboed parks, the depotpunks
and gravelledalley fireworks, the harlequined rill holyspiriting,
the dusty elms and aspens, shinhigh soy phalanged to earthend,
nostalgic cumuli etcet as liebestod etcets
as Let extrops from hebdomad to hebdomad etcetting
what’s there. Black suits are all that’s left scarecrowed by nails about
Let’s room. He berths the Dairy Queen. A queue cannot be joined.
A tree cannot be climbed beneath this sun’s etcetting sublim’ing.
The dirtroads bleached like snowy lanes beneath the sieving pollen.
Earthhum. Meirothea around each corner. Evoe. Evoe.
It’s from the interstice the vista’s gained. The keyhole is
the architect. Vejer Pinilla Roma madeleine
no more than Dexter’s terminus ad quem. A hawkdropped daysold
fawn bounced from parasol to picnictable where it licked
a Blizzard bleeding from the ribs onto the carved names dates
profanities as people backed away, the limestonedust
by interstitial enfilade mushrooming till it stood
as if atop a rocket. Let with fawn in coat unstoppered left
unseen almost.
THE BOATS
From charybdis awoke to charybdis toward charybdis
within the scaph where February’s augustlight scyphates
the sadly longing days iridized by snow honeylocast,
fissuring doorways felledthrough by the sun, the berm away
always in view beneath the moony berm (some distant headstone
for Dis, Let’d think when thinking allowed)…Necrophored from shore
to shore, scybaaling heart resuring the nonsensing days
where worst yet everything linesup—purpura purpura…
purpura purpura: Gloam! How spifli it comes! molling
about the scary shirring outremer spouting and spouting Now.
A blackhole’s whitefountain. Orgasmic Recognition. It
glitches smally all about—the antipode of oneself.
You as well sleep beneath this drumlin scyphate un undrummed.
I see just where you dream, their map. Ab(r)axial. The sun
is shining plumbeous as wont as rote resuring everything
that’s done (as nothing’s done It’s true). I see us there Genevaed
laked, pebbles black with white streaks, speckles—how we held ourselves
itall longshuttered, heavy boredom trephinating
the porcelain welkin.
FINELESS
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Dylan
To bring unchanged a deadroom continent to continent
and town to town: it’s all affined, Ophion. Phlegethon’s
prismatic mobiles about procumbent boughs whose limp
wintered limpets moth unstelled or stell unmothed yet never
are leaves kiting in the Boreas beneath regardant
cumuli zounds, the ferrous pines belittled by the zoundsy
sun that needsbe affining everything. Corsive, ma’am, Let.
Let Corsive. Son of Asmadai—Nullipper offtheclock.
A kiter, yes. I haven’t been myself these days or someone
else for that matter (cognomen: Nomatter). 86’d
unvaled boohooing livedlongdays. I’ve come for your youngest
daughter. Yes, her. Please shave her eyebrows, ma’am. Acquaint her with
blackmetal. I’ll return in two lustrums. / The airports that
we lived through! Life! That last as escalated I watched you
shrink queued, the Xing planes, the glass milieu. The certainty.
About the Author:
A finalist for the 2015 National Poetry Series Award for his sonnet sequence Bel (Expat Press), Joseph Harms is the author of the novels Baal and Cant (Expat Press, 2nd Editions forthcoming). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Boulevard, The Alaskan Quarterly Review, The International Poetry Review, The Opiate and Bayou Magazine. Currently, he is an MFA candidate in the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
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