A Body Grail

 

by Keith Higginbotham

 

 

This is all but anti-over, the liberal

land, a yellow primal game.

 

The naïve accents are high now.  We are almost

even touching.

 

Echoes

of the river want us to be echoes,

a la mode.  Tonight is the reductive

crusade.

 

Lock the picture ridge, forge

the phony conjure, brutal

stowaway of imitation far behind

the land gone stream.

 

Here is the crown from the hot house

star, a cup

of smoke stretched loose

from the book of tea.

 

Add the gnomic details: a brother

who thwarts the whole expanse,

exit sleeve from the start, and

the word “no.”

 

 

 

 

Keith Higginbotham’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Beatnik, Blue & Yellow Dog, Clutching at Straws, Counterexample Poetics, Otoliths, Sawbuck, and trnsfr.  His chapbooks are Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1995) and Prosaic Suburban Commerical (E·ratio Editions, 2010).  He lives in Columbia, SC.