Friday, April 28, 2006

weight of the running white

1
breasts full of milk children grown and almost gone somewhere no doubt horses with their rumps to horse-doors which they don't know there's a word for bolted as if something from the blue

2
although breast milk is whiter than white like Cézanne's scratches in the too bright light not the filmy white or pearly white nothing mixy about breast milk as if it's on the boil always and bursting to come up in the pan whiter than white until it foams and escapes the huge pressure of the nipples

3
nerves too as if sucking is something horrendously universal as
if all the world depended on its pressure this pain and still the
horses stand with their rumps to doors all the wrong language as
if also can be replicated over and over and over as if as if not a dream as if

4
not in a dream state but a good honest misplacement of choice
why horse? why plural? as if one were not enough as a picture as
if other pictures could fill in the blanks all the times waiting all the times alone all the empty arms and why many many arms as
if two were not empty enough? and why rhetorical

5
when the answer is at hand arms hands a word at the fingertips all body parts co-joined by the limb the generic limb arm as
if reaching and swimming and holding and dying were all the
same yet arms don't rush legs do

6
and legs legs are pearly legs may be painted in shades of white a translucent or a zinc and never white but peach and grey and bruise and green and purple and the entire palette because legs ah legs

7
legs like Michelangelo's Adam skewed at a terrible angle simply to
show off the torso a male torso twisted as if to give birth and pregnant with muscle and here the one horse turns too and
shows a side rump which in horse terms has a word has has

8
the artist as moment-manager never late always on time painting emptiness the moment the entire empties not just the two arms waiting for fill and now two artists and more than one horse and too much filler and yet not enough

9
and it is possible to ejaculate and not orgasm you say and the world spins on a cue you early but not knowing of it and a gap opens and there time slips its hand into the event of your coming

10
and slows enough so that the horses lay down and graze in sudden
fields mountain singular God winks as well as points and
there's an ache less dull in the breasts than it was
perhaps enough for the starving to creep into or seep, seep

4 comments:

David said...

oh this is really good
i would trade all my April poems for this one

one thought, maybe, cuz I heard it (or sortof heard) an extra word at the end:

creep into or seep, seep (into)

or maybe that's already implied, the reader inserting his own gaps and filler, the space between

but wow this is very good

AnnMarie Eldon said...

merci beaucoup mon cher

RC said...

i really like this one!!!!!

666poetry-finchnot said...

annmarie / /


brilliant / as usual

as a mother who nursed six

i definitly feel this poem


thank you
for such great writing

~jenn