Gray's Anatomy Fig. 425
Nerve
en route to the ward a deer that tried to jump the fence in deep
snowpack misjudged an inch or two gave way
unseasonable warmth a circle of men surround
he has stopped convulsing on the second floor they must
turn faces away the men unlike the deer
unsure they squeeze into their gloves try
to avoid eyes unlike in a poem a man pushes it
over the edge pity soft to touch heavy or anchored traveling
en route to the ward patient I watch them work
unable to explain to you in allotted time
Postcard From White Alice
locals call it Nomehenge
parabolic
only things untouched by snow
some days
or message in permafrost
they hunch and loom, cloaked
and bearded in ice
scenes of Magadan
gather round in Cold War
sabbat
beep
blip
big as drive-in screens
McCarthy film festival
silent or tundra
flood lights, beep
beep of changing reels
auroras blitzing the sky
below snow banks shove up against sea ice
like lovers’ quarrel, small strait between turned backs
a horizon
sole signs of life in a whiteout
or international date line
signal dead twenty years
names painted on steel like credits
Diomedes’ deviants
their aging the groan
of airplane engines
when the water freezes
between the islands
some still come, concert of white noise
or to walk dogs, encoded fucking
Yupics ask soldiers of tomorrow
walk into it, and cross back to wait
or the one drunk who didn’t come home
reversed his car off the back of Anvil Mountain
beep…beep
…
fell three hundred feet
like a bomb, unexploded and waiting
wind along the concave
an impossible sign of distress
Braasch and Sullivan, or the Last Dual Spectacle
I.
we package our ghosts a little to the left black or white with accent ribbons round
the wrists rubbed to blood a bow to bring the point home draped over breath
II.
make it tight
boys,
this, the first day of the rest
etc. soon
it will be just
us and only we
have to live
with that.
of the eight,
five minds resting
easy. each believing
they were Hippocrates.
for two,
the difference immeasurable
smaller than angels
dancing. and me,
I muffle
my heart with my hat
and look down
deep into cement.
knowing sound
cannot be trusted,
and no one lies
behind the curtain.
III.
The world gets a little bit smaller for you. Trees must be downed and shredded. To blanket
the floor. Catch the part of you that flees. Cows butchered to keep you from yourself. Homes left empty so eyes know you. The belly of the earth rendered once and rounded to keep you still. Life cultivated to ripeness. And again to forget you. Which is, of course, absurd.
IV. Protocol
to stage an execution.
to applaud the proper taking of direction.
to follow along in the program
to chill at the rising falling lung of curtain
to get in the last word
unheard by the audience
to soliloquy
that is, to each his own
to narrate what seems mimicry
the highest form of flattery
illegible
to confuse the dark with intermission
to lather the dislocation of sound and sight in the room
to clean with it
to know one’s lines
mnemonic
to make religious the experience
via ritual
a reduction
which is litany in costume.
V. Call
attendant
smell of gasoline
small town still
morning frost
on windshields
a key in lock
or boots in snow
crawls over land
for miles sound
is a sign creaking
in wind a beacon
or phone calling
out back endless
as a road.