In Epistles

new website!

2006-09-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

the new consolidation: www.whatbirdsgiveup.com

Dear Artaud

2006-05-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

Photoshop is taking so long and I'm thinking of you. The remnants of a shattered weed on the road. I am a-thinking about the tassels' purl. What wrongs on the envelope of the mountain? Supine, prone,

the placemats.

Le Blitz

2006-05-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

Hello Artaud.

I found you in my links and digress to put up this,
between what I started with you and how now,
without a word to register.

I walk into the room and the sweat. This is the suggestion,
overriding my concern for you, the angle of my jaw
in silence--how it hurts.

I think about who and they are attempting vibrate the silence.

I am not your children.

I don't even know your real name.

In the aerial

2005-12-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

of snow in New England, I will sew together the dark trees, the lakes haywire. I have one picture of it hitting the clouds and then snow. The fish moon that you make with an airplane, out of paper.

It is a primer for the township the lights, things beside the church, hairline cullings and french door light that is suspension in a way.

La Maid and la

2005-11-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

and la fort that das the job and la pushpin les penses los river of sleep that we are coming out of older, around out eyes,

—what a firm world we have (14)

2005-11-15T15:28:00.000-08:00

clapping, and the radio. How I look to you, in the iron eye. The beginning of a thing is my eye signing, is like turning over the surface of words. Flat yes flat. But to look at you is just. I'm like someone else with my dress on and you are someone too tonight. Who says things. Who listens in.

He tells me to move (13)

2005-11-15T15:27:00.000-08:00

in my sleep and I do. The better to hulk about in the snow, a small white dog drawing the leash. As long as moths fling at the fixtures, as with something starting to burn. A paperboy bangs his hat on the stoop. This dark under a dress. This.

He lies (12)

2005-11-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

there and there are the roses, tongues of roses and bugs inside. The raised lace curtains pertaining to roses, winter placings to top off a rose. The snow that spreads like a plate on the grass, on it the roses there are are there.

Fiercely the little

2005-10-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

weight of a meaty rose, stinking, beginning to flavor things for a second time, fuller now, more pressing. My mother is a rose. My face to the ground is its whiteness. It's white walls are my rose mother rising around me, holes in the wall, secrets.

A note on the continuing saga

2005-08-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

that to perpetuate the "still" in this poem, to even end on it, takes a knife. You have to get there. "Still" is the string that suspends the epistles between the figures in the semi-narrative. It is also the way the speaker is becoming something. This is not apparent yet. That the speaker is becoming something.

still: does not invite time to take place, but rather suspends it. Therefore the moments in epistles actually last longer, duh, because little is being done to move them forward in time

still: while being a measurement of movement, the concept actually has more to do with not-meeting. being in two places. Living two lives. Still does this.

I know no snow

2005-03-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

though snow spread like a plate on grass. The signs proper force the morning out of its hitch , which is why I am to you like a rummage of geese. They move through the time like a radio. I wheeze like a radio into your ear. The white bolt undoes a toad in its hole, our tank cracks, and geese are in store on the corners. Here here, Denver. Hi ways.

I went to be

2005-03-05T16:32:00.000-08:00

snow so spent. An evening in the valley. Saw stags small as black flowers shaking their hair at the world. Portraits of a small hole, you said, and I followed through with it. No need to stop. We talked closely entire afternoons.

Not gestures

2005-03-05T16:30:00.000-08:00

per say. The activities women do in the wash. Dust coloring the tips of their noses. They are fair enough, light, we sign smoke and we no go and we wrench in any direction as if it pinches.

On my mind, we

2005-03-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

are behind ourselves; the words are turtley things. I've made all sorts. Trade my breasts for moths and tossings in. Same with timbre, the born air, the blowing of french horns through the veranda. Behind us. Look.

We refuse

2005-03-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

soon enough the rains, snow-smelling bedsheets, castings off due the height of our windows. I made tea. I look like tea in front of people.

I am in (15)

2005-02-25T17:30:00.000-08:00

my mother's teal nightgown. Watch it. Watch the slight belt hit my ribs. The smell, it gives off. Then your left hand slipped me apart so I put this on. I think of your latest request and a cherry cupboard. I put you in the cupboard. My mother's nightgown wears me out in the evening and you distinguish it, you believe, from the night. You look seemingly. For the bull.

He tells me

2005-02-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

this is only a peice of ice which is. Also stuck to my throat.

A glass had

2005-02-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

as many as glasses hold, up to the light, sounding so in the barrels of brandy, as beer appears, and bottles mottled in dirt. My unsteadiness is bed. To drink and drink in, fooly the body of all this. The hard cord sorting of one impulse foranother far proper one. I pressed a sour pear to my mouth in spite of the evening's arrangements.

Some darkness is understood, so swimming is possible, and the way out of it is not by slipping nor swallowing. I move like a machine, my insistence of silence so visible, there, there my mother and father at opposite ends of the house.

We dance

2005-02-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

whence trippingly, my dress is bed for impatiens. For warm and the bugs and blitz der fleurs. A hard placed remainders of I swear it, severance, leaf and awn, dig.

We are loftily aiming our great bud somewhere. Tis Christmas in rubies and emeralds. I was your mother with weight on my hands. You were turning holly toward.

I would weild a large pair of scissors (9)

2005-02-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

two eyes, two holes big enough for his fingers and send him back to fields first burnt. And still. In the showy sun and what dust on our hands, we ran them diagonal through stiff white wheat. To be here shearing the last stalks off and polishing and pocketing all of the stones. Dogs are almost upon us. They’re closing in the resemblance of fields and dark in that I finish wishing. It's very dark in the small kitchen. I slip my hands underneath the new world. I ask if snow is instead. If this is what we said about snow.

There are locusts (16)

2005-02-09T13:43:00.001-08:00

in the blue field, soaked hummingbirds, his skinny arm along my shoulders. His arm called lightning—there are locusts going off like fire, spitting, a sequence of maneuvers, a place in a pound of water, houses, goings on, and knotted all of this, to listen to that. Still.

by counting (10)

2005-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

the train sayings. Saying smoke to the trees. Say snow to rooms bearing tender flowers. I move about in houseslippers. I am. It is too much to look through or do. I promenade through doorways, eat meat, lay like a spade until then.

We refuse

2005-02-09T13:42:00.001-08:00

to do everyday things with our claws. Like write on our small table. Like dishes I wish you would just do. Making becomes, you said, outside and once outside, we refuse. We wrap ourselves in knifey breath.

You touch me

2005-02-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

to and fro to musculature. To nerves and hair, what have you new. How I look to you, in the iron eye. The beginning of a thing is my eye signing, is like turning over the surface of words. Flat yes flat. To look at you is with my fingers looking into a peice of glass, with which I configure what's happening, what has ever, will.

The time being

2005-02-09T13:41:00.001-08:00

tying trains together with metal hitches and which one to jump on and how hard the fall to dust to stone to grass to matter. We blow the blood on our knees and that is all, that happened.

He says (11)

2005-02-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

so: I look so small from so far. Parting the windows on Sunday. Popping out. From then on calling distant as sparrowprints: he cannot tie things to his mind. What flails, his hands in here his hair where things left off, is not right. And people calling, small as sticks, up to him. Something, He does not hear.

If he is seeds (8)

2005-02-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

or shapes cut from paper. If he chewed through snow like that. If a newspaper bangs the door each morning and I turn around like he is doing now and rise.

Not a real deer (7)

2005-02-09T13:38:00.001-08:00

but I swerve and Look someone says. A deer. And we hauled the body down a ditch. It snowed. Our coats, covered with hard brown hairs. Which lit the snow. Who did not want to carry it? Who plugged his hands in his pockets, fiddled a little, and looked.

When the executioner's tired (6)

2005-02-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

he sleeps on the rack. Wears the chains on his head like a wig. Then I touch his hair. We put our clothes on, coats on the snow on our heads. He is having things put on and off us. It is tiring. And we hand it over: snow: and we give it back: snow.

Seeing so many things lay about (5)

2005-02-09T13:37:00.002-08:00

the white dogs wipe their gums on the trees, things exploded, and snow on the breezeway. At the funeral they say ‘just look at that sky’ and beside the sky, birds, growing out of snow. They are hardly birds. The birds away.

The deer here (4)

2005-02-09T13:37:00.001-08:00

hoof the roots at dusk. Soon. It dims the eyelets of trees, swayings, a scree of lights I watch work across the black hills, gleaning. Certain birds scissor the poplars and counting them now is kind of balancing, as we certainly did, fitting the bright snow into a holster. I held you to the mountains and to the train. To hills and hills to see things from. At dusk. What a whipping it does coming, and the train spits at the sky and I just run.

My hands (3)

2005-02-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

become when I touch him. Slipping my hands underneath his bright head. We are still. Slipped under pinnings of holly. And brave. To say we are between like ships. We are like our bodies are. Opium under our white arms and legs. In the crevice, froth; we lay like ships. My mouth is as my hands have done.

*****

The elastic of still. The indirect reciprosity of still. The joints. The worry unto death, still.

It tags

He drinks (2)

2005-02-09T13:36:00.001-08:00

and half of it sits in itself. On a night like this. With no human shape. Snow goes down to death out there. I read Thel and it goes down. The train comes, the doors go down, a box of meat drops on the snow.

Artaud dies (1)

2005-02-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

and his dying sinks like snow. Like spit and glue, who drinks it. Who would not like to know that glass? That after dinner he poured half out. Lighting each piece of snow on the windowsill, he placed an empty glass on the windowsill.