Aaron McCollough

Burden

I'm coming there to Mainz from Mainz
        in the beginning
to drink at the riverside         delete
        from the initial
flake of the inky river

these bears whose paws are on and off
        black for now long lips
my father's father's cul-de-sac
        this is already
this deed of land

I'm coming to instruct Johannes         no
        not to instruct

Eros, Ethos, Economuos

The air is good in here
we say of the pine-tree

and breaking twigs to move
the soul with what we have

to stick against the fact
of empty sky.

Just look! Cardinals
have nested here since fall

as we have come to rest
and raise our young

in a dangerous
and tangible wilderness.

Secrets inside we can't
quite name. Hopes. Shapely wants.

The silhouette of cones,
which don't resemble cones

in silhouette but trees
upended. Dear, we lease

the stem alive and smooth,
though tearing the bark off --

the wet, green, denuded
careen of this not ours

to love.

[(-0.62+0.43i) nomas]

overheater open water
where sun is pendulum like seeing as
          seeing is pendulum like sun

                                 of the circling shadows
                                 man of
                                 of the man of

water the sharp of cold as if cutting or burning (re: genius of feeling)
          the man of "feelings": when not of this humor I am of another

not ingenious not disingenuous -- a spring from a rock

                                 to
                                    a gully and flash over in ribbons

the rest and the rest of the sun
                       so I am in my senses      turning

in the water breaking     the water curling back
          the rest of the string

[(0.39+0.22i) douglas mazonowicz]

          explode the palace bird

          pieces from a mobile engraved with
                    the sipping deer    the red deposit

                                        (our sky reduced to a glance from Philomela to Procne)

                             in a swell in the stone    ferrous rings of the hand of
                    antler burin precessing fingers

and so your night-
          engale    I neither think I dream nor think I wake at the tight chip of sand

                                       (and yet you entertain your soul with talk)

          exactly
yellow resin keeps it so

                                       (soul not self
                                       the glance reflecting)

          forget the orange bearkeeper
          Arcturus here    the giant's shoulder here
                             their beauty of them

                                       (fire we name)

          the sky is clear the lights are dim or far away no clouds
          the pelts of blue on bluer pelts on black