Another South: Experimental Writing in the South

Thomas Meyer

Thomas Meyer The Merchant’s Daughter A souvenir despite the rain of long thin things and things that glimmer. • I felt for the book not there in the dark. Got up. Got dressed.Went out. A barely full moon. Opened up night. Barefoot. Cold.Wet. Grass so deep. My feet disappear. There, found it. In the car. • La Belle et la Bête • The castle’s first visitor was her father. In her blood he returned, she was the second. Each event pierced by the last makes her tears diamonds. His ship lost at sea. • Look to the way I love you. What happens in seconds will take hours to appear. Look to the way I love you. The magic ends. But the order of the magic remains. Look to the way I love you. The air fills with promise.The ball is caught. • The bees in their hive take orders from the sun. • Firm is the lack or want that causes a heart to beat. Capricorn of plenty returns upon itself a valid strength. A wealth. • Here they keep their treasure. Their work unending. • Who fumbles at the door and fools with the keys? To dream of a lion means the work goes well. • The ground still wet in those woods. • Where are they taking me? I ask and go. Imagine what’s fake is what’s real. A fig or lemon. 150 Thomas Meyer • Electrons drop through how many levels of reality have we here? Take a loaf, or take a chair. • The curtains part. The dead enter. The living go out. This is what the world is. The dead go out. The living enter. The curtains shut. • My grief or her giraffe, I wasn’t sure what she meant. Wild flowers. Or will power? What were the words? Yellow moved through the fields two days ago. And it was evening. • A white donkey. A red barn. The yellow light the mind holds becomes a thought. • For miles the dry hills roll Another South 151 in any direction. • Name the different parts of an orchard and the forest. • In the dream a search begins for the keys to open the door and start the car. A heavy rain makes walking impossible.A fox leaps from the shrubbery into the house and circles me in my sleep. • Last night on the path I saw a hare in the field and a figure climb out of the dark, a letter in his hand. He said “I meant to send it but came myself instead.” I turned and saw no more. • Animal tracks in the snow.What remains is where they went. How many light years away to love? • Before they can be any use to us, certain passages need to be copied from this book where seas, rocks, tides 152 Thomas Meyer are written of. • Parody does no good. Love is real. The rock survives the coast. Beyond that shore, over a hill in green fields horses run. Look. They and shipwreaks are real. • Blank pages at the edge of hush. An ocean roars in the leaves. I mistook a napkin for a bird. This defines a medium reality disturbs. • “I am sorry” he said.“My wife is upset.” He rose and left. She turned and said “The car is white and in the parking lot.” “I’m the Italian ambassador” I said. The bus that brought me here continues into morning. • A glass of milk poured into a sink. Another South 153 Dancing There Looking in the mirror part of the future appears. The part that comes back and repeats itself. This is not the world of adjectives. But a Pleistocene. By morning it was dry the only trace of rain the night before damp leaves into whose darkness sleep had gone looking for something older than Blood,Table, Cup. Bright bird, blue bird, tell me your name. Which is up? Which is down? And which the way out of town? The smell of June.The smell of July. A gold boat floats upon a quicksilver ocean whose surface doesn’t change but undergoes all motion. A world where the flaw is as prized as the crystal’s perfection and I am dancing there, not delivering a lecture or writing an essay. I am dancing there. 154 Thomas Meyer [3.145.156.46] Project MUSE...