THE LAST PAGE

8 6 Y T H E L A S T P A G E M O L L Y M c Q U A D E Paper was marbled in Japan at least as early as the beginning of the twelfth century and probably a good deal earlier, at which time, apparently, the marbling occupied only part of the sheet, the remainder being used for writing poetry. – Anne Chambers The marbleized and dewlapped cellular stream concludes the volume by raising a lone black eye on the last page, like seed of pear propped sexual and atilt in a ransacked cloister: the voluptuary pinpoint prophet floats in a scarlet paper cowl of mastery, waves of spiral calm that might comfort a workaholic harbor’s sky in striving Europe, could tantalize the reader’s secular touch in a swerving prayer of Persian arabesque and the signature of who wants what, the sedulous. An unguent fleck, I’m asprawl in this languid ballroom of the tangerine gouts and octopus brotherhoods. Fatigued of words, spectral umpteenth reader, you watch. The squat blue tentacled star fills itself with fleecy lips and skates across a bookish oceanarium of he-man speckled catfish sneezing in the mauve undersea scrawl – 8 7 R rapture of the glitzy curl written and bled, circa 1794. Always hue’s inhabitant, I suck and take the least light like a prima donna who can do vrithout without because the Noh costume of her spirit flaps svelte just beyond the forbidden lacquer hinge. You shouldn’t call it sacred. I am no Egyptian dominatrix, wizened, on the rebound – I have found soft consolation all these months, tended eulalia, valerian (two of the Seven Pillars of Autumn), having stitched them into the sateen quilt of my back, and I have trained my woolly dreams upon a cloud-shaped pillow with peony stoneware sgra≈tto a≈xed for my woozy nape of iron. Lobed too much, always on a diet, a wannabe ogling the Buddha and his assembly, I have kept myself content most days by burping the next Shah-to-be, a baby chimera alert by my tomb. The grammar of ornament may yet redeem me: elegant beard, jewelry elaborate, fringed cape, brave limestone, et cetera – plus, he’s ‘‘a√ectionate.’’ Even the winged beetle is a symbol of the sun reborn each day entirely with the small, wry burst of a cherished, thudding apricot. ...