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MATHIAS SVALINA |
The Beatles
TV gives you
staph
infections. I've said it before
&
I'll say it again: a
marmoset is squirt-shaped. I used
to tell my brother he could be anything
he wanted to
be. When he said he wanted to be a baby bear I told
him to launder the rain. The camels saunter
past the
emus.
The emus are
scary looking. On TV
the
Beatles look squirt-shaped & rodenty. They hold
their guitars like eyelashes.
Lets take a train to the coast & wander among the
sequoias & squirrels. We can open cans of
broad
beans with hunting knives. We can tell our bosses
that we've been infected.
We have
a bad case of
Beatlemania.
Oh no! I fell asleep. I left the chair alone. Nighttime
festers, reddens. The open
chord. The harmonies. I
fell asleep.
Blues for
Only piano
sounds like this, a
handful of dried
petals & heavy breathing.
We went
to the park &
watched a child try to
fly a kite only to have it fall to
the grass. Green is unutterably green on a Fall day
with serrated sunlight. Only a
flute can fall to the
green grass with less weight. The flashlight works,
you
just have to
shake it. The contents of the
canteen
curd into daylight. Botany rivals
typography:
each object more
beautiful without a
context.
The stamen pulled
from the flower for its
single drop of nectar & ruck.
Piano string makes a real
good garrote. Only rust
rivals the way a
petal shrinks into paper. Only the
studio walls can hold
more piano than
throat. A
vocal chord Fall, ripped paper for a voice.
Do you have
what it takes to kiss the
piano player?
If so, go deeper. Faster. Keep breathing. Go grasser.
Perihelic Triangle
This is
a difficult font
to read, what with
the
seagulls screaming over the
landfill like that. Your
banjo sounds pretty good,
though. Remember the
time dad dropped the handful of ball
bearings on the
glass-topped table?
Remember how we
traced the
movement of the sun with mascara? It's true
what
they say: you can
only touch a
person once. So
you'd better wait your
turn. You'd better wash the
bedclothes with extra bleach. And turn
the map so
that north is up.
The opposite of
geometry is a red wheel stuck in the
creek.
You can tell
me everything you've
ever
learned about the physicality
of time. I won't
tell
anyone. I know you value your privacy.
An angle is only as
good as a bunny's beating
heart.
I'd like to be a
little drunk before the movie starts.
I'd Like Something
Tasty for Dinner
You say fox but I say
toxic. You say
pomade & I
hold my breath inside
a yellow polyester
cushion.
Not every kiss can
wad up like a boulevard receipt.
Not every skyline can
strut like this.
Your mouth
tastes
closed car. Your
hands are shaking like
corrections.
You say potato
& I say there's a
golden
baby on the way. You want
to drive to the beach. I
want to tip the country.
You want to know a
secret? I used to hide below the
yellow daybed for days
at a time. I only emerged
when I smelled grandma's cornbread. And
there was
grandpa holding his
Playboy centerfold-sideways.
Everyone important
has a yellow
knife hidden
somewhere.
It's not
exactly toxic, but only what the
clock did.
AD 73
Tell me
something that feels
like eagles. My
artifice
is a guide
for you, the
trace of the
paintbrush,
the spoon on the nose trick. Teach me
the trick with the coins inside the
cat's stuff. Fairly
soon we'll
have to admit
that we've only read tea
leaves for a couple of weeks. Inside an ocean wave
one
can understand why
bridges want to
fall.
Preferably a spectacle, not an oracle: we'll
drink the
lead
that has me
searching for my blanket. We'll
hold new maps to lamplit eyes,
shingled with fever.
Beautiful oracle! Terrible bed
of cold elm
leaves!
Tell me the word that tears leaves from
trees. Tell
me the word that wrings sap from
poems.
All winter long
the snow has
fallen among the
chokeberry bushes & you
have hidden your
feet
inside the wolf's mouth. The wolf with the very sad
eyes.
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