a zinc tart with tarragon coffee

LCMT
__________________

wood texture

no axe has ever
cut these hills rising
wild and slant, sunk deep
in old iron dark
and fast as shadows
tarred to the reverse
of the lodestone moon


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

After the soldiers and mosquitos had fled, the drowned fisherman and his neighbor decided to caravan forth across the frore distance between two eternal pivots of the moment, pointed always toward tomorrow.

Caption from the cartoon Geranium Lake Prophecies by Wm. Yost for July 15, 1987


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

Imagine a book with the title Annotated Cities, a traveler's guide to cities that appear only in the notes of books. Here is one entry:

Fourth Night, or the Festival of the Long Fall

From Throwaway Planet: Celebrating the Apocalypse by Liamh Unander-Schradin, 1899, published by Harold P. Mannheim & Sons, reprinted in 2000 by Neosphere Books

The annotated line for the following commentary can be found in the ninth chapter, "Known Doors Turning", on page 114: "Soon all known doors are turned against unbelievers, but wardens at secret grilles admit the faithful upon four days of debauchery, crowded into diminished sanctuaries throughout the city."

In his observations of the societies of the Keilao-hilu island chain, historian Duryen Crampetchert wrote about the ceremonies of Fourth Night as practiced in the town of Kaelophrendi on the island of Ipranloa, a volcanic island Crampetchert portrayed as "Keilao-hilu's black and storm-ridden girl-child, a sullen brat wrapped in green forests, with a ragged skirt of steaming stone". Fourth Night is celebrated every four years at the summer solstice. Also called the Festival of the Long Fall, it commemorates the end of the world, a catastrophe that cuts short the season of summer and heralds the coming of an everlasting winter. (See "Ice Born of Fire", pg. 287)

The holiday begins on the morning of the summer solstice and continues for four furtive days of counting beads (an activity that honors the counting of the dead) and silent parades of red paper ballons (which symbolize fiery stones, the debris of falling buildings and mountainsides). Three wild nights are filled with competitions, such as kite spinning in divided skies, and moon riddles punctuated by shrieks of iron whistles. The celebration of Fourth Night commences at three hours after sunset on the fourth night and ends two hours before sunrise of the fifth day. Candles burn before the feet of every sacred statue in the city. Crowns of candles girded with copper bind the brows of household wardens, effigies of mouthless seraphim and toothless serpents. They peer from doorways, guarding linen shrouded bodies, laid out and awaiting burial. The bodies are made of stones painted white and yellow, in heavy goatskin sacks. Eight sacks make a body, one each for birth, childhood, adolescence, courtship and sex, parenthood, prime life, age, and death.

A female celebrant, usually a seamstress or fishwife chosen by a lottery, wears the grim, gore-clotted mask of Nidu Chendalmra, the green and mindless father-mother; she creeps through the city in a dress of cowrie shells and amethysts sewn onto a tangle of twisted, brittle catgut. Her limbs, neck and waist are adorned with ornaments described as "crimson accoutrements" by Crampetchert. The clouded mother-father is followed by a child, who can be a boy or girl, thirteen years old, carrying a basket filled with powdered red ochre mixed with cinnamon and saffron. The pair are linked by a string tied with many small boxes filled with beach sand; the sand represents infinite years of decay, during which transcendent mountains are ground down by the implacable sky into dark buried silt. Nidu Chendalmra carries a bag of ash gathered from one hundred fires burnt during the night of the winter solstice. When she encounters groups of revelers who greet her with ritual shouts and curses, she darkens their faces with ash, a symbol of immolation in the fires of apocalypse. The revelers light their way with lamps decorated with pieces of red glass and mirrors cut in irregular shapes, carried on short poles, representing branches of salt brush dipped in fire. A few people in each group carry yellow cardboard boxes containing small white moths, tied to their wrists.

After all members of the group have been annointed with ash, Nidu Chendalmra asks each of the four winds what will last, what will endure after the end of the known world. First she questions Slehta, the Northwest Wind, and the crowd answers in the wind's sonorous voice: "The clouded roof of a thousand nodding skies carved by sunless gales." She next questions Kaa-eh, the West Wind, who answers: "Crumbling shadows sifted with a breath of locked earth." The third answer comes from Tsaow, the Southeast Wind: "Dark canyon bones ridged in long iron roots." The last answer belongs to Djouhm, the East Wind: "White risen horizons breaking doors and chimneys of the morning's house."

The East Wind's answer is greeted with wild cheering from the crowd, which modulates into the chant "Dust rises into light!" as the child tosses handfuls of red ochre over the crowd and the white moths are released from their boxes. For a few minutes, the cloud of red ochre hangs in the air, spotting the faces and clothing of the revelers with the color of blood, and the moths flutter around the lamplight. When the cloud and moths disperse, so does the crowd, and Nidu Chendalmra creeps away into the darkness.


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

In the second gyre of the Age of the Recluded Star:

The infected hermitage looms over exiled roofs,
An island in a sea of wide chimneys crumbling,
The heated metal edge of its the ridgepole steaming
In sleet rain falling, sifted by winds, while shadows
And doubted apparitions root themselves in water.

Three silences dowered with outside properties,
Three ghosts obedient to outside laws, each carrying
All their owned disbelief: a woman protected by a shroud
Of flinching caterpillars, her right eye is blue—

Two malign green eyes carved in the upraised hands
Of a stony saint—and a child prodigy skull-split
With ink-dark blood braided into an imperial coat.


Copyright © 2009 Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

LCMT
__________________

School for Poets

She had made a classic first-year mistake: she had traded
her damaged pocketknife and a clamorous pencil for

all the world

but this planet

proved to be only
the loose husk of four
wordless hemispheres.


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

∞

In the gyre vaunted of the Age of the Tilpimultuk Truce:

Strife in the skittish beginning of the red-masked summer—
Several hooded, whispering devils appear on the eclipse;
They stand outside doors of imminent peril yet never enter,
While odd and discordant young frogs overrun all the land,
Crying loud and full-throated, for two hundred and twenty hours.

A wise and subtle advocate suffers a transformation on the fourth day
After the first volumes of his monumental work are published
By virtue of his office. He is led by a string of sudden desperate crimes
Into brotherhood with pirates, abiding day and night in their ships.

Within a small empty village a white-soled girl hallucinates,
Her tears astir with joy and hope, dreaming from perilous heights,
Winged as the sunbird, in circling flight above a twice-blest realm.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

In the seventh gyre of the Age of the Shielded Immaltant:

The eighth man laid upon a rough table is the largest object
Within a single niche lighted by wax candles carved
With a red crescent moon and a map of midwinter stars.
This spare form is dressed in ragged and torn cloth,
The raiment of those that are slain by their own hand.

His banner is a yellow sycamore leaf torn and caught under
The wooden haft of a knife sunk deep in a gentle heart.
His feet point towards a door low in the western wall,
Towards a destination that must be reached by discovery.

His head rests on clay bricks stamped with the edge of finger-rings.
His legacy bequeaths the stilled heat and light of day,
In four mismatched jars, to forty-four thousand children.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

LCMT
__________________

Two Churches

Pale shadows curl and twine
in dark and glinting
groves of stone.

Cedars are a sweeter
fragrance in aisles of
stirred moonlight.


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

In the dialected gyre of the Age of the Yequirthed Crisis:

Three sons and a daughter of a northern king, exiled in silence—
Nothing known of their unexplained crime and shame—
Are harassed by the fearsome army of the king's niece,
A warrior much renowned for her great malice, cruelty of will,
And the thick veil shrouding her forehead and left eye.

Pity her, this gnawed figure of strange vibrant power
Wrapt in clouds of catastrophe half like blood,
Half like fire, forever in the shadow of her white brother,
Who died at ten years, his tongue thickened with poison.

By cause and reason of pain, and by reason of guilt,
She will endure the continuous suffering of one accursed;
Only to strangers in battle does she ever seem fortunate.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

In the fourth gyre of the Age of the Sinquel Memorial:

An interpretation of a wild dream half-remembered:
The stones of the pit cast out of your stripped grave
Will be trodden under foot by your foolish beloved,
Who will emerge from middle bones and other books,
Waiting for the sky to break over lost deserts, lost islands.

Your husband's spirit-stirring drums will speak fear
To a god in a crest of birch-trees on a gray-clouded rock.
He brings forth the roaring of the seawall taken down,
Decimating a becalmed population steadfast in its refusal.

All those who have come before will ascend soundlessly
Upon the abdomen's third mute breath. Thus cleansed
And lightened, they fly to the Dome of Intermittency.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

In the clauted (cleated?) gyre of the Age of the Good Remainder:

After feigning death, the secondary wife of the white moth pharaoh
Provides part of the key to unlock the wooden shrine
Of the mysterious occupant of the Dessoae tomb,
The faceless hero with a battered limestone head
Sheathed in pearls, his skull pierced with a gold arrow.

The noble face on the unstained coffin had been broken
In the notorious century following its discovery,
Needlessly mutilated by the hostile scrutiny of scholars
Seeking clues without the holy quality of mercy.

Forty minutes before an unequalled storm of rain and fire,
Earthquakes and gravity halted the discredited work;
Two upper spans of majestic high-ceilinged rooms were obliterated.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

I just noticed that dictionary.com's word-of-the-day is "irenic", which I find ironic.

Laughing myself sick now.

(Did I mention that I am very easily amused?)

Halloween is over but EKS is still writing the spooky stuff.

XXVII. The penitent coward

In the fifth gyre of the Age of the Middle Gohlguanarchy:

A bone-linked pair of poets die without heirs in year 13.
Their unrhymed words strike bronze upon a secret chamber
Beneath a vacant labyrinth: two royal monuments
Carved into the skull shape of mummified fetuses
With four miniature faces of goat, ram, boar, stag.

The penitent coward who was never a killer,
A conqueror, or a liberator, finds himself far from his goal.
He becomes the blackskin companion of a hired archaeologist
Whose knowledge of his monstrous subject is unique.

They unearth the abandoned book of a heretic coregent;
This burned and scratched object of temporal power
Seizes weak minds with dreamless sleep and early death.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

In the hooded gyre of the Age of the Bunin Kings:

First introduced under obscure names and disguises,
The Fool with a narrow forehead and one subdued eye,
Cloaked within a foxskin hood with tail dangling,
Will confound the throned monarch wrapt in pease-straw,
Whose cold wounded hand grasps two fatal aspects.

At the hastened hour of the forthcoming Sun,
Malice in the blood whips the summer sea high.
With all dread ramifications of Agot's piteous error,
Floodwaters shatter the immense vault of the quarry fortress.

The burning children of Anterrabae and Shukimanu
Walk in the master's footsteps, house to house,
Village to village, clothed in unapproachable light.


Copyright © Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The Lorwolm Index

 

LCMT
__________________

Yet Another Fable

An embodied demon, jarred awake
by the consoling sound of the sea,
decides to walk across the fossil world.

Urgent reveries and electrical warnings of
the night mind hover behind his shoulder,
primitive wing beats shuddering.

In his wake, lampfire trembles. Lost dogs,
unable to hunt, fling themselves through
stammering walls of candor and black sounds.

An angel behind the gate of an ancient heat,
a rich voice burnt with incense in the testified air,
implores the demon to enter a room of Paradise—

Silence is refusal. Dreams spill over into
incantations while secret undertows drown
doubts and mysteries. But only a man
can speak a devil's assent.


Suitable for Halloween, although that was not my intention when I wrote it.

Copyright © 2009 LCMT

The crow is the only one of our door wardens with a name—we call her Claudia. I'm not a great believer in giving nicknames to inanimate objects, but Claudia was bursting with so much personality, she kinda demanded a title. We are considering the name Boris for the skull, but we have made no real decision yet. One must be careful when giving names to inanimate objects. They have identities that are not easily communicated to our species, which prides itself as the inventor and master of language.

© 2009 LCMT

LCMT
__________________

book of invasions

once upon a time when there were all sorts of things
I thought I should want but did I really?
all sorts of things I have not wanted for
a long while now for
a long life now for
a long ago life—

colt-legged things
nubile things
cinderella things
pie in the sky things—

I do not have nor want those all sorts of things and now
I must be patient with my fellow citizens of these animal nations
—my fellow creatures of this mythical species
—fable-ridden adolescents who someday might become human


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

LCMT
__________________

One Day When
A poem for two voices

This poem is no longer online; you can find it in my upcoming book A Penchant for the Ferruginous, to be published October 11, 2009 by the Intaglio Galosh Studio Press.

∞

William Corbett ©
__________________

Vermont Apollinaire

"From America comes the little hummingbird"
From morning mistclouds a raven descends
First the one kingfisher, plop then the mate, plop
They whirr and rattle away crossed wires
August's end tomatoes take on orange swallows disappear
The loons cry their bearded cry
Jane calls a crane stands at the stream's mouth
Stands impervious to any order save its own
From the sea mountains distant come the gulls

I cannot carry a tune
Not in a bucket one note
I carry the past like a mailman letters
The past like a wave breaking always
Always about the break never in the right place
When I reach my address my letters fall through the slot

The little car, the bug is yellow
1st September 2 a. m. doused with dew
now crossing the Pepperpot bridge a wind
          roughens the dark water
whipping up tiny waves. Chalk on slate.
          My shirt is plastered
to me. The joggers jog their hair
          in flames. The wind
is ringing down the last
          blossoms all over town.
Gutters are dusty with doll
          bells on stems and
on Commonwealth and Beacon pink
          magnolia petals smear
grainy rust over concrete.
          This narrow way leads
to Kendall Square where every walker
          is rearranged
by winds that sluice between new
          high rises sweeping
grit off cheerless vast plazas.
          The subway teeters by
rain like beebee chain on its many windows.
          A yellow street sweeper
below moves through the lanes
          of the cloverleaf
an ear really of highway that keeps
          to the river.
From here the state house is a gold
          thimble or nipple
swaggered over by stony giants
          blunt as stony fingers.

Summer swallows spring and goes into September
Like long division it is always there
Autumn, fall we say, fruit releases itself
You are now enough so the old catches up
Cross this bridge come to that one
You grow up and ancient history snaps back
Rubber band and rake handle

Morning before morning
Mist like flour
Cat wants in, butts the door
At garden's edge stands blackest ravens
This is the void some two or three there
Just beyond reach and they too hear cow's bell
How far that sound travels unheeded, feather on water

Hummingbirds need not prepare
They know, they know their way above the clouds
from the red sugar water all the way to Mexico

Goodbye Goodbye
You ruby throats who stop in air

Memory ardent for mercy

1984


A Year in Poetry, Edited by Thomas E. Foster and Elizabeth C. Guthrie, Copyright © 1995

Excerpt from the novel The Boy in the Yellow Leatherette Portmanteau by Gralie Bohe:

"I have a list," Yost replied. Ethan had asked him what he had missed most during his time on the island. He and Ethan were seated at one of the tables outside the Union Street Cafe, on the smaller of the two patios, not much more than a bare hearth of brick separated from Munger Avenue by a horse trough filled with lobelias and geraniums. They had left Ethan's godmother at the Bookscape bookstore, caught in the firm grasp of Ashtabula Littlehales' enthusiasm for Estonian literature. They were drinking coffee, with a churro split between them after Yost had asked about the possibility of butter almond cookies, to no avail. Yost had gravely considered the available brownies, muffins, scones, turn-overs, cheesecakes, carrot cakes, bearclaws and doughnuts, before deciding on a churro.

"Butter almond cookies are on my list. It's my list of Five Things I Never Want To Live Without. Which is different from my desert island list. The things on my desert island list... Yost paused as he took a sip of coffee. "Actually, I made lots of lists on the island. Lists of things like food, water, a toilet, any kind of plumbing, a bed, a futon, a chair—I had never imagined how horribly uncomfortable the ground can be on a desert island." He added another dollop of cream to his coffee. "No chairs, no bed, nowhere to sit or lay down except on the ground. Which is hard and bumpy and always pokes you in tender places."

"Not one of our great outdoorsman?" Ethan smiled into his coffee mug.

"I am now, I guess—I've got the skills, whether I want them or not." Yost liked Ethan's smile at that moment. There was nothing left in it of the baleful grin he had given Rafaella Blisset de Alb at the police station. The man lounging on the other side of the cast iron table, licking crumbs of sugar and cinnamon from his fingers, seemed open and sunny.

( Read more... )


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

A few extravagant eastern heretics—gangling alertly—digressed with illogic and bleach in their conflicts with unspecified linens.

Caption from the cartoon Geranium Lake Prophecies by Wm. Yost for August 30, 1988


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

LCMT
__________________

Three Papers

Rafaella never mentioned her hypergraphia,
but Ethan knew his godmother wrote incessantly.

He knew that two days after his mother died,
his godmother wrote for Marie-Clémentine,

filling a sketchbook of sixty cold-pressed pages
with a white rage of minutae smudged into graphite.

Out of the nonfissile mass of words, his godmother
extracted seven lines, which she typed, sullen black

on a sheet of onionskin paper. The sketchbook burned
in the crematorium with Marie-Clémentine's body.

The poem of onionskin remained unfinished, folded
into a translucent parcel, kept in a Japanese paper

wallet creased and worn, with bamboo and a dragon
printed upon edges of green shadow and gold leaves.


Copyright © 2009 LCMT

Federico García Lorca ©
__________________

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.


Translation copyright © by Robert Bly