Lullaby (with Exit Sign), and: Still Life (with Death), and: Donor (Wind), and: Sketch, and: Speech

Lullaby (with Exit Sign)

I slept with all four hooves            in the air or I slept like a snail

        in my broken shell.

The periphery of the world            was gone. The giant exit sign

        blinking above my head.

My family sings            its death march.

        They are the size of the moon.

No, they are the size            of thumbtacks punched

        through the sky's eyelid.

What beauty, what bruise.

            (What strange lullaby is this        that sings from its wound?)

Here, my dead father knocks

            on a little paper door. Here        my family knocks, waits.

Come through me, my darlings

            whatever you are: flame,        lampshade, soap.

Leave your shattered shadows

            behind. I'll be the doorway        that watches you go.

Still Life (with Death)

After Magritte's The Lovers

We were burned and we were blind.        We wanted to record the occasion of us        so stole sheets from a sagging clothesline        and wrapped them around our heads.

This is decoration-inhaling damp heat        through the rose-colored gauze        of our bandaged faces.

Every shadow loved us, every eyeless girl        made of cunning and wind.

We owned nothing but ourselves and we        were only an idea.

In a church parking lot I found a man's        tweed suit and a box of pastels        the color of a bakery and drew you        shoulders, a dress and pink shoes.

Our heads full of flies and violins, we tucked        and smoothed our new skins and sat        for our portrait on a Sunday afternoon.

We scared away the half-drunk picnickers        and raised their cheese sandwiches in the air.

The hours stood still. Even the worms        held their breath.

Donor (Wind)

The throat is optional,as is the larynx.What small objectcan you pullthrough the pink?Many things diedhere: a nest, an oilleak, a typewriterribbon's languageof bile and thread.Spread my uselessparts in the citydump, spleenfondled by seagulls,vertebrae pluckedby lonely men.Tape my uselessparts together again and I'm your disappearing shatter.Your snowflakein heat. Now feedme to the windwhere I belong.

Sketch

        Thinking              entersthe landscape-

                what detours!

        A region in which human beings and        books used to live

              Vienna,            my eyes            in German

In the midst of losses                language        remained

            deathbringing            muting

                Those years and                        the years

                    darknesses

I was meant    to sketch                    the clockhand's        direction                a poem perhaps

Language is    shelterless

        open

An erasure of Paul Celan's "Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen" from Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, trans. John Felstiner (New York: Norton, 2001).

Speech

I have come    to you                        alone

        a green                word

        growing        an inward landscape

The force        I believe        I have been conversing in

is human

An erasure of Paul Celan's "Speech to the Hebrew Writers Association" from Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, trans. John Felstiner (New York: Norton, 2001).