Carousel Horse

 

  by Mark Lamoureux

 

 

 

 

Flesh a ship’s flesh

 

bones the bones

 

of the dead

a gilded instrument

 

bespangled

 

trotting mouth

agape               at

 

München

 

             Follow

the camelopard

             Leviathan

my brother

             Ark      lion:

blade & frost born        M.

 

Illions chopped            loudly painted

             round haunches

 

             a kouros

for the children-burden

for the brass ring-

clink into fingers

the lightbulbs’ glowworms

 

matte wooden axle-Bavaria

in a child or monk’s hand,

Neuschwanstein, always

mountain-sized

           mädchen &

 

scale errors

never daunted

           giving

 

as only object can

love inanimate animate love

 

           mount

 

of God

           (nostalgia)

of History

           (nostalgia).

 

In the powerless loop

seizing

 

gazes & bodies

Touched

moreso than

a quick beast

 

in successions’ rosary

            leisure station

 

            such as I am

 

wooden phantom, a cog

no less perfect

 

moving

 

stasis

orbit & archetype,

 

warped & buckled

 

ever resplendent

 

plastic finery

 

bronze tack & rod

 

unclosed eyes

 

trotting always

 

toward my brothers & sisters

away from my brothers & sisters

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Lamoureux lives in Astoria, NY and received his MFA from the New School in 2007.  He is the author of 5 chapbooks: Poem Stripped of Artifice (winner of the New School 2007 Chapbooks Contest), Traceland, 29 Cheeseburgers, Film Poems and City/Temple.  His work has been published in print and online in Fence, Mustachioed, miPoesias, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Lungfull!, Carve Poems, Coconut, GutCult and many others.  In 2006 he started Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry.  He teaches composition in the CUNY system.