Laurie Price
INTO THIS PLACE OF GUESS WHAT
If the ‘short twentieth century’
refers to the period 1914–91
I mostly wasn’t where they were.
The straight trees of past arts
were worth waiting for for
consciousness is known
by news and imagination
does not last,
precipitously precedes
the wee royal we or
insists on inference, a depth of tone
akin to copper or bronze.
Are you there yet? Give
me a sign so I can open
a program, introduce my feet
to my socks. After the office
when mild butterfly winds
ruffle my Hemingway hands
I go to the post office.
Something dull or sharp radiates.
I want to dissimilate.
That can’t last either, but
then sleep is huge.
MIDNIGHT EIGHT
When I look at you every day I know
whatever it is will be different and
will surprise. The minute tends to endure
until connect is everything, a vaginal place.
Talk is cheap and change goes ka-chink
in your pocket. Footsteps adverse to
the walk and slink of avocado green coat
skim sidewalk & window slides to street,
pencil to newsprint. Pieces that split don’t fit
and must be fixed. Flesh is always at a premium,
binary ingredients sharp as teeth. Walk right in.
The architecture changes. Even now that
coffee’s cold and views are smudged,
a man, no, woman, smuggles onto this windy
dark street in her angled cloth all atangle.
This wall-to-wall situation evokes thoughts.
Thoughts that thought’s what
keeps us awake.
THE YESTERDAY SENTENCE
LOOKS PERFECT NOW, THANK YOU.
Love is easy to patch so that
its color makes you amble against
saggy anticipations harsh with heat.
Steam clarifies that stretch.
Being armed with concrete
where a patina features auto exhaust black
against a mustard back
drop near a door.
Door could open. I order
a chicken korma. The authorities are asleep or
dumb or acting dumb and those
they appeal to dumbfound me.
Virtual environments have their own hierarchy.
Almonds exist crushed with butter and cream.
Gauze is a sash there is no mirth.
How does measure target a tense end?
How does damage allocate a middle?
He says he wants me because I make him
feel happy and he will cook for me.
When I want to engage I open
a new window.
WHAT WE HAVE*
I democratically elect my context, your content,
our contract. Mediate defiance to a stalemate in
its third day under siege by other networks.
Madagascar rains miniature recycled aluminum motorbikes
with moving parts and even smaller VW bugs.
Departures are swift like runoff from a runway.
Life in another country drained of natural resources
is a misspelled farm animal yet continues just the same.
Just the same, my android software may address
our debt crisis once and for all: what I owe you,
what you owe me. The debt crisis? search me, who could say?
I’ve got my hands on paper, a corner market cornered.
But at this moment “shock and pain” makes my hands shake.
You shake your booty, you think I’m talking ‘metalica’* but no.
My pen’s ink dribbles over everything as if change could
be written, coined, but words are words. This world is
what we have, what there is, some wise ones say.
Yodelayheehoo Yodelayheehoo Yodelayheehoo
*Note: metalica is argot for change/coins in Spain Spanish
ON YOUR WAY
If I seemed to sentence myself with
gravity, less vertical than clunkage
and your words failed to reach me
or rather, all the letters akimbo across
the Atlantic and down over the Keys to
not reach me well then metal and wood,
meddle if they could, I’d have to bail.
A memory made too clear, stereo voice,
anticipation parallel with hope,
a pheromone in its own right,
would not exceed your belief. Or mine.
Let’s talk about it then, about how a spark
seemed to point to some future moment
when. And then this is when. You are on
your way. This is that day we agreed to
wait for, and we did it, speechless.