So Listen VERY CAREFULLY

Green 92

Green 93

Green 94

Yellow 18

Golden 1

Golden 2

Dead 4

Green 95

Green 96

The small trees strain. Light and substance. Beauty doesn’t occur in text or nature.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 16.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 17.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 18.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 19.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 20.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 20.

No 21. Shit. Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 21.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 22.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 23.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 24.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 25.

Heat, cheek, iron steam kettle. Cheek is against future. Swell of dirt dervishes up as swallows swarm above the off ramp to Exit 47, freeway bound, knotted, thick. This vulgar dark of guttural fucking blossoms into the foolhardy roundtable pageantry of: oh, love you. no, love you.

Concepts shelter inside retina stilling a procession of children’s paper boats just about to stake formation atop the porous barrier of watery recognition. Inside porch door stands Grandma. Grandma has no skin, but was powdered or was powder. From inside Grandma Talc marches out, atomic, white. The goldening backlight devours her. Father, dead, yet still at the table, devours her. On each fleck of Talc is calligraphed a facet of this Night.

She sees as Grandma sees and Grandma sees as she notions flies must see. Outside the porch door, each particle contains, screens, verily screams: rope swing, sea wall, tree. High tide laps stone slab steps, scratching of crabs scuttling in the aerated wood bin, dead minnows in primary green plastic bucket, sheet of wet white bread to stop the swell of blood from just under cheek, water wings,

oh, love you. no, love you.

Gaslight stove, porch, moon, man.

She can’t make facial structure, identity. Her words for this are all quite well broken from overuse. Misshapen from adolescent skirmishes fought attempting to string these heavy ornaments on the limbs of child, body, lovely, fuse damage, fuselage.

Grandma has no skin, but powdered, was powder. Inside her Talc, dust, atomic, white. The cottage door knocks about the frame. Tables for eating TV dinners stand alert, arachnid in the gold light of interiority.

Light

Light left closer

Light right left closer

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 26.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 27.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 28.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 29.

He is on the wind.

At center of her, there is a ripping about, some kind of wonderful hunger. Her abdomen the scrawning broke mouth, a hunger. Hunger, hunger, hippo. Hunger, hunger, hippo. Hunger, hunger, hippo.

oh, love you. no, love you

A rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, bloody, mucus covered and destined to tear its father from the heavens. Her needle clutched ready to stitch her weight into the celestial thigh. In the center where the darkness blossoms, loses petals, and waits on the deck of the Night, space is defined by retina alone. Warm hands, inner thighs, swallowing coal. Powder Grandma, yellow squash and the wreckage of bones. Teeth on plates. She is made to swallow the coal with supper. Then inside her a torch, a fire, a match. He didn’t know it was there.

These things are the named things: small dark suburban street pavers.

He didn’t know it was there on that time when they bowed in secret at the back of the bushes and broke behind hedges, polluting the stand against vagrancy taken by the moral hands that had planted such vigilant bushes. They on the ground, knotted, birds of legend, the macramé of Grandma, spider plants.

Their heat thin limbs twist around and scuttle out the darkness, white and green falling past sin in sharp, tangled knots, longing out of the planter, always dividing, balling up against each other at the ends, and then going elsewhere. Moving like spider plants against her, the words wash back. Tongue feels inside mouth. Her skull is the split planter. Or did her skull, the aggressor, split the planter? She remembers words: press, iron, lips. She knows lips. The spiders in her belly are set aflame by his presence. They claw upon each other and out, a tidal flow from her mouth into this dirt. They start forth into the great green, yellow, dead, forestscape of Grendle Bud Run. Only to be mowed down by Tandys, Michealsons, and Seavers, Johnsons, and Irish Setters, mowed down by the condo crowd tripping across the field on the way to the Box-n-Go Store.

Their union reduced to swift light.

Left right light closer

Left right light closer

Light light light light light light light light light light

What soft, “Jesus H. Christ, shut it. Shut the pie hole, lady, please. Jeez—”

Blue Pie. He is blue and round as pie. Blue Pie. Her spine serpentines and stops on the concave slope. Pain pipes the music of a deep Cathedraulic organ throughout her matter. The note lingers between her things. She has her hand on her things. Her mouth full of dirt. Back bridges and splays down, bridges and slaps down. Shapes come back to concepts, concepts. Matter comes back. Before her eyes a mercilessly bright black pair of shoes. And the counter harmony of roaches.

“Evening, Mam.”

Green 97

Yellow 19

Golden 3

Golden 4

Dead 5

“Evening, Mam.” Silence, then, “Gary, call it.”

“Evelyn.” Out comes from her.

Blue Pie leans down. “Huh?”

“Evelyn. Closer now.”

So warm his cheek.

Blue Pie bends deeper.

So pink his cheek.

“Come a little closer now.”

Blue Pie melts down.

So wet and wide his eyes. So wet and wide his eyes.

Blue Pie quivers.

So moist his cheek. His baby fat shudders, reacts against itself. His lips hang open.

Blue Pie puts a hand above her forehead, but does not touch.

Blue Pie puts a hand above her center, but cannot touch.

Blue Pie lets his knees hit the earth’s surface, hard.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 30.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 31.

Blue Pie has cradle breath. Blue Pie smells as cradles, nursing, bottle liners.

Blue Pie to her ear, “Holy fuck, mam, I, holy fuck...”

To Blue Pie, “Listen very carefully.”

Blue Pie to something he has never seen before, “Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy holy holy fuck fuck fuck holy fu–” through this stunted and primary prayer for blindness, “—ck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy,” his round blue face floods up with salt tears and they fall down and down. His gaze she follows to matted clots of thick maroon, the twisted bed cover of a melancholy feudal Baroness’s miscarriage bed. Between her thighs thick, red mucus.

“fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy...”

It is the Law that that kneels sobbing between her legs. It is not a sweet blue-faced boy. It is the Law.

“fuck holy fuck holy holy holy holy...”

She is not on the yard of Grandma’s summer cottage, spent behind the bushes. This is the median strip on a deserted stretch of some interstate.

“fuck holy fuck holy holy holy holy hol huh huh huh huh huh huh...”

She reaches past the Law, pulls his ear to her lips, “It isn’t a dream. The only sound that you will hear is when I whisper in your ear. I love you.”

“huh huh huh...”

Night was here.