Four Poems

 

  by Mark Cunningham

 

 

 

 

Tamarisk

 

The voice in my head that disagrees with what the voice in my head just said.  An internal surgeon is looking at Anselm Kiefer.  This sentence isn’t clear about the momentary power structure (yes, it is).  Morning is permanent, but its location changes instant by instant.  I have to drive somewhere to take a walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tea

 

All focus is connected:  I forgot why I took off my glasses.  The small hole pin-pricked into the top of the plastic cup lid:  you never know when there might be an eclipse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indigo

 

The meaning of “no no” does not depend on the words themselves or even on the tone with which you say them, but on the nature of the pause between the words.  The Tamil Tigers eat Tony the Tiger for breakfast.  There is a type of tree named “ash.”  Walking through a room in absolute dark is still not the same as walking through a room in absolute dark with your eyes closed.  It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.  It couldn’t happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norway Spruce

 

It took me 27 years to get the hair/hare pun in having Bugs Bunny be the Barber of Seville.  I do not represent myself.  This letter represents me.  This letter cannot speak.  I have to say it.  The theory of relativity backs my claim that I’m not lying when I say this is too the world’s largest fire work’s store.

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Cunningham has poems in recent or forthcoming issues of Dusie, Otoliths, and Parcel.  Tarpaulin Sky Press will be bringing out a book tentatively titled Body Language, “which will be a sort of diptych containing two collections, one titled Body (on parts of the body) and one titled Primer (on numbers and letters).”  About the poems here in E·ratio, Mark says “They come from a series on leaves.  Each poem starts with some element of its leaf’s natural history, appearance, or medicinal use, and goes from there.  The leaf probably doesn’t appear in the poem, but its characteristics guide what can go in.”