from a sequence entitled
     the unfinished year

 

by Anne Blonstein

 

 

 

fording

 

 

having bought one another

knives

they could     

splice the distance between

kitchen     and bed     

into

their yellow dreambook     

 

they shelled ripe judgements

 

in order that these elements have a chance to

breathe     to expand     

 

through the galvanized mouths suspended from her ears

a wind that had cooled the fingers

of an english rabbi’s daughter scraping parchment

for proscribed talmuds

 

they sharpened reciprocal instruments     

 

to prepare an uninterrupted salad

of past and future : save some remnants

of the present as the promise

for a recipe marinated in after the familiar

 

 

 

 

attending

 

 

on the night she can only serve up

mangled rabbit     with sarcasm

she might wear     a lost gold necklace

and

 

— hair shiny with wasted nitrogen

 

we need to let the phantoms

come     we need to leave

to approach     the secrets —

 

run in a broken stiletto

bearing the gene for a fascinated ear

until she lies down where a child has cried

into torn stockings

 

hired shins — virus-won — necrotized —

 

when the lights went out

in white a girl played with squares

as a book floated by on

pearl ash the bird of heaven stopped singing

 

 

 

 

falling

 

 

has she ever danced     in a storm

of cadmium sulphide     along the edge

of subject matter?

 

kestrel swinging low

into webcam

 

gives access to another reality

than that     which inspired it

 

has she ever needed a dream     only to discover

that snow settling on grey matter

sculptures a thought

with wings?

 

kilimanjaro’s smoky light

invades finish

 

has she never     creeping behind

an altarpiece     scraped gold     from an angel’s

eyelash     mixed it with nitrogenous dimensions     

titrated them     (alice-like)     into a racist’s tea?

 

 

 

 

parting

 

 

the body tries     and the body tries     

but when a self transforms into the possibility

of its unselfing     and the selves of the body

scorn one another

 

autogenic destruction

results

 

capitalism compels us

to work ourselves

to death

to stuff our houses

with things we don’t need

 

headaches then

heartache

 

ancestrally driven responses antagonize

directed reading

 

in rembrandt’s first self-portrait

the face veiled by shadow as if

the artist already knew inner struggle

breaks down with exposure to a garrulous light

 

 

 

 

corrupting

 

 

she finds a head blossoming with white tangles

as if fear trees had been planted there

that she might scatter concept blossoms

for other eyes

to unravel

 

arc

-i-     

typing denatured read

-ness

archives daily     

randomness

 

To love objects is     

to love life

 

from ashes to asparagus

 

now ingests

seasonal nonsuchness

 

rehearses a decompositional mind that

consciousness might dissolve into verb     dresses each

line in translucent mixtures of eggwhite

and polonium     as if grace could follow aberration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anne Blonstein is the author of four chapbooks and five full-length collections.  Her most recent publications are memory’s morning (Shearsman Books, 2008), correspondence with nobody (Ellectrique Press, 2008) and the butterflies and the burnings (Dusie Press, 2009).  She is also a contributor to Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by U.K. Women Poets (ed. Carrie Etter, Shearsman Books, 2010).