US & THE BAD MEN IN THE ELM PLACE
Snort of rookus, poison’d
Spike on rear ricasso, & they’re
Good to empt a man.
Don’t it feel peccant, how many
Windows they broke? the way
They rubbed their jaws like that?
It’s enough to raise allovers
& the damnd vellications.
It’s a Lon Chaney Christmas :
Sun pale yaller & hung
Like a cape, halfassed in its last
Look at the world.
Us & the bad men, godblessit.
In the elm place. Each of them
Esau : one woman on either side,
One dexter & one sinister.
But not a single one was witness
To our honings. If you forget
Them they are gone. They are
All Gone, our real movement.
FOR JABBO SMITH
Cook the steak in mucho butter,
Dress it in key lime honey &
Banana ketchup. The whitest rum,
The greenest egg : When it’s peeled,
One can pattern the shell flecks, &
That’s language (an exterior delimit
-ing an interior, entire unsubtle Egg,
& the fish crow : ohmigod, ohmigod.
Everybody’s got a laughing place.
It begins in the mouth, shakes
Loose from there, Cladys, each
Your cast turns open’d
& swung like a balisong blade,
Inconsistent but mortal gorgeous
Risk, wrist-to-finger. Yours was a
Scattered thing, but not itinerant.
A means by which to pour out,
Clear up to the brim : to dissipate,
Then reappear, if only shadow :
A book still with its rattle.
A bookshelf with some play.
WITHOUT PREMEDITATION & EVEN AGAINST MY WILL
Went an ailing. Went an opening.
Went undesigning.
Enacted “Put-live-things-in-you”
(in case you really are that close.
O but just admit the will is fecund, tho
Animated & daubed with a set of bones :
spectry composessor which
Empty the self in filling the jigger.
Are you moving it? I am not moving it,
This pencil : but my page is marked,
My glass goes clean, ti pa ti pa. What did
You there see? (doesn’t matter :
Only what sees you can matter.
A poem sees. It sings. The last man
On earth singing the first
Song ever written. Doesn’t matter.
You go (
You’ll be seen never & by no
Low ringers, least not until later.
A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop.
Snort of rookus, poison’d
Spike on rear ricasso, & they’re
Good to empt a man.
Don’t it feel peccant, how many
Windows they broke? the way
They rubbed their jaws like that?
It’s enough to raise allovers
& the damnd vellications.
It’s a Lon Chaney Christmas :
Sun pale yaller & hung
Like a cape, halfassed in its last
Look at the world.
Us & the bad men, godblessit.
In the elm place. Each of them
Esau : one woman on either side,
One dexter & one sinister.
But not a single one was witness
To our honings. If you forget
Them they are gone. They are
All Gone, our real movement.
FOR JABBO SMITH
Cook the steak in mucho butter,
Dress it in key lime honey &
Banana ketchup. The whitest rum,
The greenest egg : When it’s peeled,
One can pattern the shell flecks, &
That’s language (an exterior delimit
-ing an interior, entire unsubtle Egg,
& the fish crow : ohmigod, ohmigod.
Everybody’s got a laughing place.
It begins in the mouth, shakes
Loose from there, Cladys, each
Your cast turns open’d
& swung like a balisong blade,
Inconsistent but mortal gorgeous
Risk, wrist-to-finger. Yours was a
Scattered thing, but not itinerant.
A means by which to pour out,
Clear up to the brim : to dissipate,
Then reappear, if only shadow :
A book still with its rattle.
A bookshelf with some play.
WITHOUT PREMEDITATION & EVEN AGAINST MY WILL
Went an ailing. Went an opening.
Went undesigning.
Enacted “Put-live-things-in-you”
(in case you really are that close.
O but just admit the will is fecund, tho
Animated & daubed with a set of bones :
spectry composessor which
Empty the self in filling the jigger.
Are you moving it? I am not moving it,
This pencil : but my page is marked,
My glass goes clean, ti pa ti pa. What did
You there see? (doesn’t matter :
Only what sees you can matter.
A poem sees. It sings. The last man
On earth singing the first
Song ever written. Doesn’t matter.
You go (
You’ll be seen never & by no
Low ringers, least not until later.
A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop.
C VIOLET EATON is the author of Some Habits, which won the Omnidawn Open Book Prize. He lives in West Fork, Arkansas.
