G.M. Quinte
Lunch
Codes
I.
"She were keen on
the wetlands, and so were I."
Cap-sized bobs and chafing dishes
bobolink tenders.
Leguminous butt-ends deliquescing in the nurses' breezeway,
a quintessence of small-A ambrosia.
He peeked at your ballot box and something about aversion,
a nimbus of donut sugar, your lead-white
aureole. Displaced
from the doghouse, a hardon-shaped
piece of air.
The entire fountain was made of water and you, my muffin-hatted
Swede, educed a dozen thought molecules.
Mangroves are puppets, you said.
I haunted your ghost.
Remember?
I threw peonies at the shark (distracted)
and at the regional dishes of your forebears.
We've started thinking again.
II.
We were the taffy guild—
Time was our confection.
We shared in common—
Dread of the moment.
Our figures embraced—
Dense cloud of impurity.
III.
“Scores will perish.”
Pleasure Craft
The time has come to pursue the leisure
Activity, to be deer and divide
A planter of
pomegranates. The night
Has no volition, no audience. We glide
Past passing flakes of interest. “Civics lite.”
Cameras close and open sans
pleasure.
Can we invent a new kind of pleasure
Craft? Are we making fine use of leisure?
Can you open the hatch so the light
Armored battalions might divide,
Might confer upon us the right to glide
Like bodies in bodies in bodies of night?
Night after night after night after night
Aubade splits and beach-kiss
pleasure.
Feel the mystic collapse: we’ll just glide
By on mistakes. Smallish gods blessed leisure
Seekers, parked our Lotuses. Who
can divide
The thing from itself
and bottle the light?
I must not change my life, he said. No light
Have I ever witnessed…even at night,
He said.
Watch a boat divide
The water. The folding pleasure
Is an enormous unfolding leisure,
Vees into
which we always glide.
Cored and peeled afternoons glide
By, an eternal sinecure and light
Lunch by Mom. They’ve discovered new leisure
Forms active only at night.
The days are broken. It is your pleasure,
Introducing the great
divide.
Time versus other-time: pieces divide
Pieces over parts, a pleasant glide-
By, brandishing the
medal of pleasure.
Come about, come about! There is no light
To these pieces. Ptarmigans infest the night,
Forage for the seeds of leisure.
Clear air with air. There’s no leisure
But speaking. Ripe basket of
night,