9 September 2013

Dara Wier [Wave Books]

from Dara Wier’s You Good Thing:

Needle Threader in Need of Needle

Tincture of morphine, tincture of so-forth blue hazarding,
Before you opened the door, I shut the windows and rolled up
The rugs. I shook sheets open over everything that didn’t move.
Down in the valley the boys are playing their guitars. Music to
The ears of the mice in their walls. Far unfurls the snake’s skin
Left on the wall. What do you hear when you’re home with your dog?
The day is silver, the wind insistent. Who’s not here is who’s kept
In mind. Here does move more than one would suppose. To the fair
Where sheep sleep in their straw beds. After a scare of sirens & fires,
Look at the water looking at us with desire. More than a rosary of curries,
Less than a beefsteak cross, you put two and two together and you
Come out crushed. Who covered all their mirrors with sheets
While they grieved, who wove together hair bracelets for themselves
To wear, nearby a llama stepping into its pajamas.


Stainless Steel Spiders

This disguise you’ve adopted has its advantages
While you while away your forsaken transcriptions.
You forbear your way back into shadowstruck corners
With a knack and a bucket and a stick and a scarf.
You sweep by with your black broom busy finding.
You hide and you test and you spin and you shift.
This is not how we remember your history and how
You under a table a chair go exploring without us.
There aren’t enough disguises forever to hide you.
One day you’re pretending we fail to notice you,
Another in plain view you blaze at us daring,
Now you are nothing more than a moon-sheltering
Black cloud of falling birds we are gathering,
We hold these birds in our fretful keeping.


Scorch Marks

Whenever we find wide black swaths burned across our paths
We think of you. Our friend the black swan turns to look
At us frequently when we pass by its pond. We see your back
Far away deep inside the pupils of those we love. We stare
And we stare where we are. That is what we do. It makes us
Look as if we’ve misplaced our minds or perhaps replaced
Ideas of mind with some new stronger fog. I feel you
Fading and find you falling for that feeling, you staring farther
Into one of the farthest vanishing points in the universe.
We find this alarming. We are losing track of something.
Our friend the black dog watches us carefully as we walk by
The door she guards. The crows look at us in their crooked
Ways. They converse and inverse and walk like the mechanics
Of mystery they are. Who are we to believe what we say?