Four Poems
John M. Bennett
olin again
each inhabitation corners
laundry in your ear a
“brain” or laptop
sizzles in your pants’
each faucet gurgling
with the time your
coat is due the time
your ants retreat
behind the picture frame
each pencilled congrat
ulation’s wandered off
each loudness convects its
microphone before your
eye a swelling leg a
tampon remembered at the
railroad crossing was your
dream of shovels
falling in the closets
the spider
p eel the sciss ors if
yr g ate sand wich opens
toward the beach in
flames if if was
off the face a tow
el doubled in the
flooded closet is a
shredded phonebook
full of millipedes is
the mumbling neck tastes
the blades the hand
roams into the of br
each finds your if name
finds your off name ff
inds yr nname
S
a comer
mute fork rel umbered
coil you slumbered off
the sausage sweat a
spinal knife your
sack regurged a
fork de pended ,was
meatlithic ,sprayed and
said ,intonsiled ,re
aped the short stay
beneath yr earth's
a tongue desertion ,w
hat a something glit
tered in the greasy
mirror was it the
tines your book re
moved ,your ti... ?
...la saturation, nous garantirons, lisant,
la validation du signal...
— Georges Perec
heard insomnia’s dream
we the after ham
uffer in our quest’s
poison ants can s
peak on t ray of
thought or thought
the tabled sky de
flected in yr quiv
ering pool was
hafted words and
fro thing in the cave
ah tombs relabyrinthine
mouths the ran
dom moth laurel sp
lashed the mirror
yr gaze beginning clouds
became and turned it
off the maze becalmed
was blank “a kind of”
swarm infusion in
the statue shrouded
vines and batshit
…..
enter the sidewalks
were wind and sand
humping a rotten
head next the weeds
the hypos french
fry bags
empty white bottles
Rustling through Ivan Argüelles’
Epilogue to Translation to Heaven
John M. Bennett is online at johnmbennett.net.
