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Callaloo 23.4 (2000) 1189-1190



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Joe Henderson, Comma

Gerald Majer


The line would like to slide all the way
down,
     would like, in fact, to break itself
      up,
    let everything part,
or stick here or there for good, losing its comma
(good and ready, good and ready: forever),
and so keep pushing, before the drag
      goes too far with it,
move one foot forward,
looping it a few times,
      distich and hemistich,
again the mending,
      and again the mending,

and all the while something in the air
      makes ink,
squidlike, clouding its own motion,
fill and void
      of ghosted chamber,
(and then, and then . . . .)

Or sketch of a body
      that scribbles across its margins,
oils its carriage, carves
      into its darks
    leoparding a skin
of shudder, convulsion,

      the commas thick-fonting
    where a bite of mouth
backslides
      the line out of statement,
creases over phrase,
    the stops bursting out
in some pod of code-- [End Page 1189]
How would I frame
      this, this, this this--
        street (?)
        organ (?)
where each accessory of the night is rousted,
      composed
        and then tilted, rumbled apart.
      (Boxcars. The truck. Houses shake.
    Bricks shiver off mortar.)
Whoever is shouting is drowned out.
        Whoever is shouting
is shouting still.

And along the street where the thick grass
    starts between the sidewalk cracks,
      inside the church
where the fingers wander over keys,
    notched bars
of the slides,
      bench rocking,
foot heavy on the pedal,

every last thing weighing
      less than itself,
every next thing weighing
    more than itself.
Each time it would float
        it would sink,
every turn of the wheel
        a foot on the ground,
every step

        taking another ride.



Gerald Majer's poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in Crazyhorse, Field, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, and Western Humanities Review. A winner of a Maryland State Arts Council Award for Poetry, he teaches literature and creative writing at Villa Julie College in Stevenson, Maryland.

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