six poems

Marcella Durand

Assemblage (for poets, help yourselves)

Half circles of wood, bent, steam

bent, as boat bows almost, double-

layer, square ends, allow for rocking

sort of dumped, scattered, waiting

in an otherwise empty space, shadowed,

a few lights, not very good lights,

LEDs, cold, and not all of them on

across the ceiling, too few allow

for shadows, demi-circles of wood

have no shadows, but strange, odd,

even with the dim lights there

should be shadows, shadows of

shadows, take some,

mention them.

objects lose their memories

if you think you can carry

it back or hand it

to someone, if the handle

is worn to a shine and thread

wound about it to hold

it to the metal chisel part,

if it were used to grind metal

or shape wood, to pick teeth,

to look out of, to see more clearly,

or up to the ear, your

hands for sure held it

and while I never fully

understood the task,

the tool’s shape

will remind.

scarcity

the number of casualties

is extreme

and I must save

paper & ink

feel how paucity

feels when dragged

across the surface of the page

how few grains of color are

held in medium of water

it could be drunk

in lieu of available liquid

it could be

a substitute

it holds

a few grains of widely

available berry-weed

a few berries

soaked in water

might make this

its scent

is what

is pungent

the gesture of hint of hue of

tint of color

slightly colored water

water with molecules

of modifying tint

scent is what is pungent

the push, struggle

to push a few grains

across the tooth of the page

the tooth of the grain

of the page

the berry across the grain

fruit across the weight

of grain

berry hangs in water

the pungent scent of ink

if I hold page to face

how long does that scent last

across the tooth of the page?

as grains settle to

the end of the glass

holding the mix

of natural &

ink — medium —

of emulsion — that is what

it is: emulsion

of hue, color, tint — water

modified, element changed —

use it now

other than to

drink

surrounded by scarcity

thinking of

scarcity,

obtuse, accidental,

thoughtless or

quite deliberate —

grain dragged across tooth of page again

fully

opaque | transparent

In the half circle

In the half circle or between, you must

study the boundary even if a strip of dust

or half-eaten artificial turf (eaten by squirrels)

(as seen by a group of friends) (the squirrel eating

threads torn from the edges of the artificial turf)

that is itself an edge between edges of trees

largely growing, hugely, just over the line,

or the fence, their roots inhabit, roots

inhabit, down the roots go until as fine

as down, down fine down, fine, find

softness until the roots transform to

softness, the size of hand’s interior,

the interior of the hand is soft, as

well, palm, palm as in leaf, spreads

through lines and creases, creases but

does not wrinkle, smooth but lined,

a glove of muscle and skeleton,

nerve-full glove that holds the roots

and (important to know) when amplified

the human hand dessicates,

but when small and untensed

(it only senses).

but the banal newspaper article leads me to the spiral galaxy

you said the first ten lines of my poems were the sound

of me thinking; their sound an echo of me talking enclosed

and maybe what I imagined as myself, as in dreams every

person is a manifestation of yourself, the bus driver is your

desire to drive a bus, the phantom leaping off the fire escape

is the thief of my own plunder, he stands atop the tippy

top of a skyscraper with cape flapping, but now I

imagine, I do not dream, this satisfies some taste for action,

as does the incredibly, shockingly gory late-night horror

fest give me peaceful dreams unlike the war reality

unfolding today, the double-sided bombings,

the unknowing of where the spiral finds itself next.

Prosthetic Tongue

Tell the machine, my soul

to yours, the teleportation of it,

we touch digit to digit, thumb

to thumb, in triangle of heat,

cool breath in, hot breath out,

your voice over the lines, a

miracle, to be ravished, how

your voice comes through

electricity coalescing about us,

tracing through earth, water, walls,

through satellites forcing sky

to grids that fool us as star

or as alien, communication

from afar, organization, point

and lines in the darkness,

constructed to be visible, audible—

I am out at the edge of sea, my hand

touches my ear, in the sky,

to the others who live

deeply, inland.