tenth millennium
i’m sure i was the same
as the
stone; round and ungolfed;
fractured from something much larger
that stumbled down
the
mountain.
there is nothing that
laughs any
harder than
a murder
of crows. i can sit, without
a
fossil etched
any-
where; bland as rock, and know
they
aren’t
laughing
at me.
something acute as one blade of
grass is enough to make the
water
run and pitch as if
screaming for shelter
at the end of its life.
horizons avalanche running their
fingers through
forbs.
i won’t borrow
blankets or quicksand
in mud
unless winters
are the same as blood.
for one more night
i can stay folded and dull
as a
memory of sun barely moves soil.
planet
i carry a postcard telling me that
penguins hop like cannon
but,
swim for all existence
like bereavements ritualized
for every person who has ever
died.
water, for whoever it drowns,
is an
eternity,
and the jellyfish that someone
called
my soul has grown legs
and spits at the ground.
i mailed a letter to
angkor
wat asking a keeper
to bury it
under ruins that
hadn’t yet breathed.
i wanted the rust
of
night to be a beard you
couldn’t
simply
shave
away
with an
unmannered sun.
i told myself
something today i could
never forget: the
thin shale you break
over your knee is a
half-open door without
echoes.
and while i waited
in the ER i realized the spores i
inhaled were buttons of
time, exhausted and
dripping through a decade;
shoveling and blooming,
like an accordion
pressed in fog.
silence becomes midnight
the curtain on the window is
unclear
and proofs exist
without license
for making yesterday
a shadow
on the prairie.
if i can’t find you
there are newspapers
with stories and
sermons
without
priests that will trace you like a stencil.
so i try to
break the glass
that hugs you
in blades of color while a thousand
people
plummet from
a cliff but shatter
before they hit the river or,
as night
is a
statue that melts in snores,
an avalanche
can bring the one-eyed sun laughing in your face.
and maybe you are peeking
from the balcony
of a disinterred day,
still blind;
still unprepared
for paralysis
but,
screaming little tufts of
morning
that are crumpled train
whistles without smoke:
calendars say nothing of time:
your carcass lays down without a word.
i’m sorry to see us go
some misfortunes deep as a pitchfork
might grab a bale of hay
is how
a blanket squeaks on wet skin.
and i pass
you by
determined to investigate sanctuaries
packed with promises but
really,
full as a gall bladder.
and there you stand
benevolent and pink
as all yesterdays still
to be: a blossom of salt.
there is a fortress here, likely
as a soccer team
to tear shirts and scream,
and the provender
it eats
disappears like atlantis
before
daybreak or another gallon of whiskey
or another cinnabar of flag colors dotting the sky.
i swallow the night air of a morgue; some
beeless
hives drop to dust. i can’t calculate
whether
hearts should matter
or
just
breathe.
a picture comes to mind
involving
a florid nightmare where
aviators
are not piloting planes but drop bombs
anyway.
sleep is not a deterrent. its
stones are only the failsafe of architecture.
and once more,
that palaver
you brook
in cross-
eyed
garden speeches,
drifts in a steamy heaven; there is a rainforest of incognito
in small places under
foot. there is a cross on the parking lot from which
radioactivity can ripple in dominoes
and poachers take liberties in
shadowy sunlight.
it seems there is never enough to let go.
X marks the spot.
Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York, USA. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rabid Oak, Old Pal, Rise Up, The Blue Collar Review, Beatnik Cowboy, Helix, and others. His collection, “Dead Calls and Walk-Ins” chronicles his job as a taxi driver many, many years ago.
