Alms
Seth McKelvey
Alm 24
we stand huddled in the dirt
blowing steam into our hands
trying to hear through the static
that throbs like a heartbeat in the eyes
as we play minesweeper with the dial
some of us methodical, some haphazard
but all uncertain, all in danger
every so often someone comes
along, one hurts
tries to reverse-engineer
the tuner, dismantling it all and sometimes
even rebuilding it, but rarely
but we have other radios, in various
states of disrep
-air or -ute
some playing jazz, some country,
some talk,
some gospel
-soft rock
but all peppered
meanwhile the rest of us wonder
if we caught that right, that
station identification
a call that’s only half a sign
destination’s name but hardly
an arrow pointing the way
but we hold our breath
as we scan the waves, sliding
along, one hertz
at a time
Alm 25
sunlight flares / off the spiraling braided cables
strung across towers
in catenary arcs
packed gavel suspended
over ursine sea
Nanna’s down there too, with the moon, in the wild
across the bridge, er,
the innkeeper, waits
it’s easy to forget
the view is nice,
glimmering through blood in bears’ fur, mattering
my summer
seen under sunshine
the moon means
something different:
ur’s in that famous valley where we’ve all been
Alm 26
once ago I stumbled
that made me slipped
too little friction from too much
—too much too to little—
Point X is the place where I remember
good dreams I never had
but I keep coriolising around this earth
-en basin, greased with in-
nocency, but the effect is only a seam
that mustve been ripped open once
I go, shod in bloodshed
caught in the well, escaping tangents
cold, I go gilt in no sense, heavy
in the glow, the warmth well have
Alm 27
put
up under
siege in this crystalline temple of topdown dis
-order order
molecules need no master
suck down another round of light
manicule volleys
in gold seen in back
-only ephemeral reflection
of order for orders
(order for odors
and synthetic cuts are natural geometries)
no walking through these glassy photonic walls
-pure upper bound wrapped around
everything
sneak down another road in the night
find in this fiat light hors-d’oeuvres
wave-particles the connective tissue
- vector manacle from it to I -
a ray from flesh to aromatic herbs
Seth McKelvey teaches at Auburn University. He co-edits S/WORD.
