Three Poems

 

  by Melanie Brazzell

 

 

 

 

Destiny is just a choice you keep making

again and again and again. . . .

 

 

You lay black weight on the belly

of the water, I watch —

just the shape of your obscurity,

forceps clamped on the dawning edges of your        mystery.

We may never know the ontology of holes.

 

This multiplication table upon which

we lay and do our business, I say

I do not wish to be in love,

only to ache over the agar of this infection.

 

Anthropometry, the measuring of human skulls.

With glasses on, I peer over my printouts:

the mathematical risk of suicide,

invariably leaky latches on our play pens.

The danger of finding oneself facedown in the
     pool.

 

Knowing the length of one’s own soul

is some kind of eugenics — a heady joke

in a room full of tinkering glasses,

when we know the universe never stops
     expanding.

 

Vibrations of a self rippling over its

to-be-decayed body —

We have been both occupied

                                       and in exile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

unbearable flatness

 

 

 i can see

all you hide,

dry sockets.

 

the

obscurity

in nudity.

  (not

  frontal,

  not pornography:

  sex  math  nerves

  )

 

but retreating.

from hands

skin

fleeting.

 

try pocket,

economize

   save

 catch

    releasecatch

save build release

 

(petit drama;

circuitry) a

seeping hole

blown,

slippery

horizons of a

different metaphor

— stop chasing.  at last

 

an eclipsing shadow

sweeps across the breast

towards, wanes, lost.

 

infinite depth,

                     infinite surface

cobwebs

without overhangs:

unbearable flatness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

indents instead of scratches

 

 

i press

“to remember.”

no, scratch that.

truth? — to consume,

  imbibe

imbed in bed, bury.

 

i press you

into wine,

   cast in

   plaster.

hold, ladle me —

 

intent

    on spilling,

       bubbles clinging,

not ready to join air.

 

locking, not sweet.

selfish oars stuck,

                cast aside.

bog death

only paleolith,

  petrified?

 

p.s.  i press

against error

a=b=c

if you make it.

 

set bones

mold.  hurry.

trace lines,

memorize:

                 i end you begin.