Jorie Graham: Ten poems

a little wind in it now swelling the shade, off-white,

dropping the shade, lightflecks spit forth, bright bits of

busyness

a yawn frets forth, frame tacking left a bit then back,

emptiness foaming-up.

No hero here--so sleep. Predestination gossips. Trophies splatter

against the shade where they are won, then lost, outside.

And then the sound of rain. Maybe a woman and a man

running a bit

then clinging to a tree.

Oblivion

What dimensions must the defeat acquire, the homecoming,

scrawling all over my skin, my sickly peering-in,

for me to finally hear the laughter? I know it's there,

beneath the glittering exterior-latex, beneath the storyline and then the loss of

storyline--quick, bright derision-

oh these musicians make insidious tones-

clawing the singsong of their instruments ...

How mocked the glance

dipping-about in this dawn becomes,

the mockery right up against

my retina, the envy in me blushing up against

the possible, the taste of the laughter as it slaps

my face, what a flat mask, what a lacerated singularity peering out.

A small thing, really, the laughter, it could be anywhere, now that the

wind

revives against the walls, doodling, as if enamored of the sophistries,

the trembling

thin midwinter strands, and bumps, and ontological vomitings

against the wall--the Dutton's wall, the Franklin's wall ...

I saw it highlight then forget each twig, it held some light in it,

or, no, it twisted back, peeled-back, some light,

and then the light resumed its place;

each shadow spurred, sprung open, made to lacerate,

flavored by wind, toil, guise--is that a lyre? is that the engine

incorruptible?--shadows in which the thing is hid,

mocked suitors all as she unweaves.

I was stealthy, and timid, then felt the tonguing-up of blame.

I looked in all the places I had been.

I summoned up my wrong

and made a brittle climate for it

and it swelled--I turned--it seemed the caravans had just gone by-

the grass looked tall, the tips conceived their paraphrase of wind.

Outside the children sang and ran in circles to

a tinny tune. Outside

the shepherd fetched the wide and liquid herd back in. Outside

morning attends, its mask approaches and attends,

crows the musicians strike up black flames,

in clouds themselves churning along

from their impossible place of origin--oh impossible.

Something--not an idea--a tiny velocity.

How it sharpens the edges of the singular.

How loud the guests all round us have become,

day molting off,

no footprints anywhere,

every glance a skin, a rag thrown on the pile,

which raises in place of the world its gigantic debris,

the site of the I, the game of catch,

the dog at the end of the snarling chain.

What was his name? How can he tell if he is mine?

The Hurrying-Home

A gust inside the god.

A listening sliced-deep into the hearable.

A little temple of bone and sinew built;

blood rushing round.

A pasturing of molecules and thought....

Dawn's weaving murmurings all round my head.

So carefully. Arranging it.

Not yet do the silky windows which,

all round me, still buried in last night's acid

cornerlessness,

underneathly low--not yet do they