from Breeze Blocks

Franklin Bruno

BREEZE BLOCK (DAY 5)

I’m proud of my below-

average score

on a narcissism self-test. No

imagination, though. Explain

how money comes into it,

by which I mean

homeownership.

When I do smoke,

it’s always outside, at the corner

of the carport, underneath

an overhanging shingle, at

the side of the house

farthest from the front

door. It would take

eight steps

along a narrow poured-

concrete path

that runs between

the house and my mother’s

plot of roses to reach

the backyard through

a small iron gate.

Two or three times

a day, I smoke

out there, kick the ashes

into the dirt, leaving a streak

that fades in a day,

and carry the butt through

the gate to the trashcans.

I think of all that,

and think of writing it

down, before reading in

Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs

“And then you can’t smoke anymore,

if you do, I immediately can’t breathe,

if you want to smoke go out on the terrace.”

Breeze Block 5, p.2 (of 2)

Two necessities

for any piece

of writing: a principle

of inclusion (which is to say,

exclusion), and one

of arrangement

(that is, of order

and measure). The gate

is unlocked. More exactly,

it has no lock, since

the last one broke off

years ago. Anyone could

wander into our back

yard at night. Odd,

in that all the doors

into the house have

not only locks but

additional deadbolts,

which my father, under

some compulsion, double-checks

before bed. Anxious,

but not panic-room

paranoid: unlike many

neighbors, we’ve never

installed electronic

security or hired a private

watchman. That’s overkill

on streets like ours,

which is only one way

money comes into it.

BREEZE BLOCK 7

Waste not / want for nothing.

Streets are agents / black-clad, swept.

All for naught / want not what?

Anything, but how? / Swept, shot, captured.

Aim a camera down / a hall, a street

Inside, won’t it blur / knocked from hand?

Whatever it records / reports from a bullet

Omnidirectional / she never cared

For commas for question / marks on questions

How I want you / want you to hear this

Clear the grid that causes this / lens to read the sound

The shot and shooter / the sweep of the street

The school where we’re sent / where we learn to be agents

To pan past a pawnshop / to read an eyechart

It’s bidirectional / if the street is working

On what can be done / can be done to them

Or what can be done / can be done for them

When all are released / from the school to the street

We don’t waste a moment / we learn to be free

SECOND SUBJECT (BREEZE BLOCKS 12-13)

tone rose     rising through a sieve     on autopilot
a double boiler hot     plate bitten into     tape
thin tune     unknown to it emit     to contemplate
pinning into particles     now lymph, now calyx
now it doesn’t     spin up into     percolator
sweet to be a waltz     a sequence swept in time
will I sing     arousing themes now     to accumulate
attuned     piled up inside itself     in corners bloom
so truculent     you think, grow rich     you sing for
a succulent     all things the song demands of
inconvenient veins     a strainer stopped it waits
to beat in tens     not dozens     out in force so soon

suffer yourself what throes     around it calcified
ejected where’s the kitchenware     the gum, the gauze
the grammar gap     so reluctant     too thin to think
it’s through what’s thrown it’s     mama’s item     lower
partials     raisins in portions     stranger than the play
between the worsted and the frosted     accolades
for shame’s domestic groupings     to rain resistant
can a tune not start     an avalanche     but just soft
layerings     reversible     to process the subject
emerging intact     but changed by its dyeing     skein
spun not to spread     a melting net     wide and deep
over the counter     so recalcitrant     set in its ways