BellumLetters #8

birdbox

1.

no arrival, only the construct

a tethered thing, a lid
to lift

2.

wood from the sea
where birds are made
wood box

the saw
through


white tail
tip
blade feather

box of knives
box of beds

3.

thermometer for blood making

syringe, feeder

drained and piled
faceless wings

shaped to slip, flesh grip
soft and bone

glass on stone
tip red tip

knock on bone
without breath

________

outside, too
a life stretch
brown and moving
eye, wing stitch
the missing sound
boxless

_________________

4.

sad neck, deflated
unfrozen and soft

homeless, three
sisters
missing home
tapered tail to tip

unlidded
without flight

BellumLetters # 7

lyrebird

I'm awake in the scissors
of ten thousand lines, the ascension
of soldiers. The lamplight
here is cruel sometimes; limbs
squiggle in the haze, the letters
rearrange themselves, anagram
constructing a refrain, silvery
and unlimited. Do you
mimic or lie? The flax
threshing allows us to deny
the frayed hems, the genuflecting
tides strewn with radioactive
plastics that elide the difference
between safety and disaster.
A mouth of salt makes ink elastic
and all our papers brine.

BellumLetters #6

_all the kings horses_

Body puzzle, where to begin
to put you back together again?
Sun-yolk spilt, my split heart
plump with thieving (even
that isn't mine)
_________________Like
a pencil the missile moves
over the city; outline of streets
and houses traced and tensile.
Soldier, isotope, when you
report the green sunset
and how the halos bloomed
and the ash clouds bundled
one thousand shovels,
the budding pacers
made from prosthetic
transplants, silk lantern
engines fit for larceny, become
sails knit together with
shrapnel, a place for roofs
to grow if it finally rains.

On the BellumLetters

* Is it scary to read the bellumletters? I do not necessarily want it to be scary, but I acknowledge that link-clicking poses a certain degree of risk for the reader. Where will the link take me? will I be offended? manipulated? upset?

* I like the way links make clear the "underneath-ness" present in all text: the zip-current that binds the syntax , the sentence bridle. I also like being able to make links with the surface details of the poems -- the way a link works as a sort of metaphor-maker. But it's oblique; not literal. AWAY.

* What is "the news"? How do we get it? I do not even know what news is. Is it the most important stuff that happened today? Who is the news for? How is the news here different from the news there?

* I think of the bellumletters as being somewhere in between documentary and commentary. Also, it is highly subjective: when I select links, I'm also documenting the things that I read that day. They are not always all about the war in Iraq, but they are all about cruelty, suffering, or lies.

* This war is so dumb and makes me so sad but saying it feels hollow and vague. I don't know what to say about it. So I say around it. This is not enough.

* The "national" part is the most odious aspect of "national poetry month." I dislike nations. Why "national"? It seems strange. The monthification is perhaps superficial, but it's the national that I disdain. Especially today.

BellumLetters # 5

l i g h t h o u s e

i.
the village is an instrument
for cash. lavender skyline
smudged to pink. It's how
the sun shines in: round
curve grinding snails
to bits. Where bars
suggest animal and faux moss
the garden imagined by capitalists.

ii.
the frozen birds
today were like starlight
streaming through a sieve.
Feathers soft despite
the cold. We dragged
the goose home in a net
and then arranged the quills
upon a shelf. It's like
pretending somewhere
else the lantern still exists;
machines of nesting, a wealth
of stunned propellers.

BellumLetters

Ambulance

As if that lets you off the hook. My skirt
could not become your palm, spread
wreckage of tires, triggers.
Giddyup, lover. (But really
you are full of it.) I practiced
making fists under the table
as garden walkers rowed the aisles
with sown syringes. You think
I don't know how you stay
awake so long? The taste
of gunpowder on your wrists
and the dogs barking
all through the night. I hang
my garments on the line
inviting fire, syllables.

BellumLetters

WEATHER REPORT

Not everyone is legible:
spider syndicate, lace fences
hung for borders where wires
cross and heal. A hanger
for a hand, a healer. Which
wires cross? One is lost
among the ruins
of arcades and alleys
pretending threads
and glue make bottleships.
No letters bind
him to a mother's mast.
The belly is a bone
to heal. Take one
thing from her
and she becomes a house:
a loaded gun come mended.

BellumLetters

OPEN BOOKS or PROFIT

It will not be enough to open
the wires; the monkey records
filed away shall be shelled
and scattered and planted
as keys hid in the garden wall
pretend roots where a lens
flowers unlock their soft
hocks to dispel wounds
excited by the spring rage
of rockets, plastic, and microphones.
The diesel ills. How can we fill
the dirt with so many books
when so many come home empty.

fire in the hole by oliver munday

here

BellumLetters: A Project for National Poetry Month

P R E V E N T I O N

Today I drew marks
in the sand; they
reminded me of letters
or bones or teeth. Perhaps
you would call them vulgar.
The light pulls back
as an arm draws the arrow.
Bow, the bough breaking.
Rope and pulley singing
as wind throws birds
from the cliffs. It isn't even
ours -- this sand. We are
so stupid sometimes.