EVA KARLEN
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
IN ADVANCE OF A PARAPHRASE OF LIGHT
learn to shine a stone like an idiot magician
this time for keeps.
who wanted their palms read in the dark
and cried at the fate of sinners
and was scolded by dad.
I don't mean an ideal woman was possible
a beautiful waitress seemed more likely.
with rings so if the hands were placed in front of the eyes like so were placed it could be as
if their hands possessed your sight.
loveliness
a local fluke
to the detriment of local women everywhere.
HYPER LOCAL TELEVISION
I will turn into a waitress in late March, if you misstep. We've studied the same lamp posts. It's happening to your mistakes where no moss had.
Each island has a side rough and brown and a side craggy and green and no island too large to be considered
where questions arise and must be answered. Everyone sees how hard you've been trying. The forest may require your whole body. If you pay that debt in kind nothing you could have ever predicted will suffice.
Add honey in order to catch a paper trail by its paper tail. Dead weight is forgiven in the face of moving and affecting. The three hundred year old oak tree is forgiven its transgressions. Obviously.
But my greatest concern: will this penance heal up my red rash?
In turn, Caravaggio applies the quadratic formula to collinder: sep a rate light from dark. More honey.
Even the new songs sound so songlike today.
Like a quill. Prone to loops.
It takes guts. And a lot of macular force. And what kind of an instrument a harpoon is.
FOR MY BROTHER
WITH THE LATEX ENERGY OF THE WHEEL OF WATER
CURVING AROUND THE BEND DOUBLE JOINTED
NO BLAME YET A HOOK OF PERFECT ELECTRICITY
NOT FELT IN THE BODY WHEN IT CAME DOWN LIKE A GREAT CROOK
AND PRODDED US PIGEON TOED
CATTLE IN THE CHINA CABINET AND I MADE A DECISION THEN
BUT TOLD NOT A SOUL THAT I WAS RESOLVED
TO BE THE BIGGER MAN WITHOUT THE LATENT ENERGY OF THE WILL OF WATER CURVING
AROUND THE BEND AND IMAGINED THE GREAT ORB AS THE WHEEL OF A MILL AND
ASKED THAT BROTHER OF MINE FOR AN EAR OF CORN
HE ALWAYS PREFERRED CABINETS TO GALLEYS
BUT NOTHING IS FREE ISN'T THAT RIGHT
VERY LITTLE APPEARS IN THE COURTS OF DEED ALONE AND IN ACTION
HE WAS INIMITABLE
I WAS RESOLVED IN THAT MOMENT TO FORGIVE HIM MY BROTHER WHO I AM BOUND
TO BY EFFERVESCENT FISHING LINE NOT IN THE THOUGHT ALONE OF A MAN OF DEED
AND NOT IN WORLDS ONLY BUT IN THE MIND ALONE OF A SYSTEMIC HOMEOPATH
I LEARNED TO BEG HIM
FOR AN EAR OF CORN AND IN SO DOING FORGIVE HIM
FOR JAMES, AFTER A PARTY
You looked at me like a gray acrobat on a yellow construction. From the corner of the refrigerator, by virtue of a taut brown finger below a water stain and a line and a rhyme combative,
it was granted on the dock: each letter lain could be mistaken and should be understood as a doting epithet, taken and misjudged, and not enough to siphon water from your lesions.
Who insisted a flayed cat on a yellow construction is all the space allotted to construct a bed frame?
What plain parcel signified the amount of that I had to write in inches? And stare.
We lived there, that was enough room to swing a cat, under any numbers and the circumstances of porch night, unless you dreamt a massive orange planet had been open.
It was desperate under a buttered bread knife for an efficient slicing.
It was any better but this is the best that I can do.
What risk leapt where his arm disappeared into the saddle, and clockwise from the left a gray mare with human eyes has two cups two peaches two pears and two plums.
In beaches inside which I could try for you.
You get nothing for your efforts
but that we may see each other.
EVA KARLEN lives in Philadelphia.