Jacqueline Waters


from The Garden of Eden a College

I.


In the initial guess
land foamed over the plain
dust came up
waist-high between the buildings
where a puppet lolled
in uncoordinated rigging

     Whatever way the day began
it's hot out now
oh mental widows
after weeks of pith helmets and ground meal
having a whole conversation without the word now
now you I recognize
not by sight, you red jake
but by your exaggerated feel . . .
Your idea that crime would match passion
and passion would match
any movie written like a single
and that the necessary rain
would be, on reflection, regarded as nonsense
and that I read to relax
that you are only for show
here to effect transition
to monologues from non-stop comics . . .

     Driving, we found ourselves wending
between two snubs
typed into the psychic depths
Behind the green gate
tenderness precluded intuition:
we couldn't be nice to them
or they'd decompose
but to hold that in your head
and not say it
stifling all you said
as when community service
hung in the balance
along with the reins that looped the horse's head
humans who agreed to live together
life that passed by tacit agreement
on the ship-to-shore line
sending effulgence out sensoria

     Applaud what is
since taking us out under a big oak tree
sitting long-legged mulling
is dwindling
as is our time among seers
who didn't tell us anything
they wouldn't tell a telephone

     Incensed by burning cones
the beginners have all come back again
effecting a rearrangement of the chaises:
the bridge, the sun, the hedge
behind me where I hear some rising
and some falling

*

I hold my own, at cross purposes
to the game, creeping over a hillock
eliding first defenses
Custer whose season
abhorred scum or its sensations
is so-so as a magical interest
At night I want not to sleep
in the morning more so
whatever was it
caused me to think my life specific
dropped into a wicker chair
rattling off cocaine
with a feeling of arousal, a sensitivity
to tiny differences, no stronger than
one state of mind passing into another
miming the resolution of my affairs
with an appalling convincingness
   although my affairs, to date
are just my questions
a certain harried pensiveness
wrung by a rotted clock
its reverence pitted
in little stabs at the old pincushion
What about landscapes perceived by trespassing
do they count in the meaning of the injured mind?
And whoever felt a single sensation
unaware of thousands of others
succeeding so rapidly
as to leave one razored impression
frightened of its own perpendicular
to my accumulated groans


Copyright © 2003 Jacqueline Waters

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