The Fiddleback

poem by Marci Vogel

 

ALIVENESS.

Which is & is not simple awakeness, eyes wide openness, the gate a fresh coat of picket. A roller dips up, down, repeat, repeat. White paint lifted from a red pail. A painter in white wears clear eyes beneath lenses open. The gate freshens awake & a life enters.

BARK.

Tree protector, sheets of living paper unsheathing to grass. Leaves confetti sparkles in the  sidewalk. Four legs race at a nutcracker that is not a cat. The line pulls, wraps around a trunk wrapped in gift.

CHALK CIRCLE.

The moon is. Full flat, suspended opposite side of night. A compass traces our spherical bed. One rolls out, one steps in. East to west, west to east, not erased, present, even when disappeared.

DINOSAURS.

Gathered on the hill, pumping black what they were. Pully, crank, counterweight, horse heads guzzle. You can lead a city to thirst, but you can’t. Swallow the embezzle, greedy mechanicals swivel under stark daylight, twenty bobs per frack. If not, how do we turn off dark?

ELBOW.

Joint of locomotion, join muscle & skin.

FROCK.

Moreso than dress, pleated torso flaired to black. Not hemmed in, the twirling spirograph spinning out flocks. Crow stenciled sky, Russian egg in silk. Unmixed silhouette, negative on film.

GIRL, THERE ONCE WAS.

One with a curl right in the middle. And when she was good, she was very. And when she was bad, she was blindfolded. Can you see her, wandering the bluffs?

HARP.

Sounded by wind. Three holes drilled into cylindrical. The hill hums into sleep.

INSIDE IS NOT OUTSIDE.

But to choose sides is impossible, a dialect of silent. Listen, one can listen to another’s insides by placing (gently) two fingers outside the skin. Alongside the neck, inside the wrist.

JAY.

Blue stellar. Sharp beaker of stars.

KEEN

Etching in fog. Light sweeps the circumference. At the foot: a single vocal lament kneeling on rocks. Center pierced.

LANTERN, MORE THAN ONE.

Polygons of bright, one two, three six, not gone, all present rectangular prisms in branches. Small yellow suns at night.

MERIDIAN.

A man with a sign stands. No work, need help, god bless. An imaginary line circling poles.  Longitudinal middle space, Purgatorio, no Virgil. Not middle, the highest low point, to have & to have not.

NOTHING.

But what is offered.

OPTICAL, SOME WAVES ARE.

Visible, ultra-violet tucked into rainbow, third letter of foreign. Other waves are not seen but heard, seashells lifted from wave to ear. Familiar oscillations frequent your no longer deserted shore.

PYTHON.

A man wears aliveness around his neck. Like a pair of sunglasses, like a scarf. He rolls a small suitcase down Venice Boulevard, asks a girl in a blue & brown dress. Which way is the water?

QUOTIDIAN.

Not inside marks. That which we say outside all the rest, the talk talk talk of everyday speech unlifted out of mouths, speaking, swallowing, tendering every good morning.

RAMSAY.

Who failed, poor mister, to leap over.

SKYSCRAPING.

TOWERS.

From afar, not so tall, circled by mountains, women sentinels sent to watch over construction. Sent by whom? Does the sky kiss, & if he does, does he kiss the towers, does he kiss the earth, or maybe she kisses him & does he kiss back? Inside the lift into which people enter & exit gravity.

AN UMBRELLA.

Shelters when open. Open is seldom. Seldom rains any umbrella shelters. More likely, in the trunk of the car, unsheltering. In the closet spiraled. You can cry puddles, oceans of unsheltered.

THE VEIL, LIFTED

Unveiling what is covered. No longer statue, but sculpture. Blink & blink again. Now you see her, now she disappears. Still there, the chalk circle. Moons are always female. Aliveness in the marble.

THE WAVE THAT ARRIVES & DEPARTS.

Lands across air, alights in your treasure’s chest.  An ocean of engulf me. Island erosion. Over centuries.

X-RAYS.

Waves that see inside us. See above.

YES.

The braveness of it. Diving under, touching the sand. Surfacing again.

ZEPHYR.

The breath westward until no more.

 

 

——–
Marci Vogel