gauntwater and brittlewhite
a word
among the oxygen
shriven and shirred in a canticle
nowise its own and nothing to do with
the porticos of its origin
the para-
noise
the wane
and bowstrung toward the weather’s intermezzo
a palimpsest of shatters
letting the limit appear
as if a storm opened up in the palm house
and were caught on camera, on cardioid mike
trysting the chandeliers of sateen
of folding fan and chloro-
phyll
thunder’s faint fac-
simile and sigil
woofing under trefoil vaults
its pinnate fronds a coiffed
a viridian ocean
still life with eau-de-nil
with zerologue
with motion
º º º
on a wide-angle, agate sky
twilight shorts a fuse
cascara and liquidambar sputter
a pirate copied patois
in sequences of non sequitur
and inter-
rupted inter-
rupting shortwave intimacy
as the body and everything in and with-
out
(the lungs and their geodesic revisions
eyes developing thermal photos
high speed video-
stream
heart like a glass of chinon in the cochineal sun)
fission and mute poly-
phony
each particle shearing to panicle
in the language / of the lifting up / and letting fall / of language
–Andrew Zawacki
____
Originally published in Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 32&33 (Summer/Fall 2006), and in Miracle of Measure Ascendant: A Festschrift for Gustaf Sobin (Jersey City: Talisman House, 2005).