Ann Lauterbach

from A C o n t i n u e, or E n t r y

2.

What next? Unique cruelty of the undone.
Rook rhymes with book, crow with toe.
Also hook. Also know.
To countermand restlessness, settle on fact
as it seeks to order a well-worn shoe, two
shoes, a pair of old shoes. And yet
the sun lays claim to
natural dyes, rifts through the glow-torn
phenomena where I see
the metonymic rituals of spring
expose a mournful goddess in her crypt.
Hook rhymes with crook, know with foe.

3.
Strange flotation of the stampede, resembling play.
Rumble, blaspheme, crooked under the gun.
Too much is previous. Even the game,
about to start, will vanish
with its partner, day. Reach out your spoon
for another portion; arch your neck.
Everything is in profile toward evening.
If, on behalf of a last chance, you move
Yours sincerely into the winning slot, then
cherries, stars, and the quick weave of your
hair into braids: all this shall be yours.
These are lessons of chance. They are not plans.


5.
Intentional rupture of the flow,
blurry, as in a Vermeer. You, who may
not have seen such reproductions of the same,
missed the optical illusion which,
as it happens, is rhetoric at its best.
He saw how materials collapse
a desire for reality’s articulated shield.
The Dutch love the small, domestic stage.
I love the huge impertinence
of an unresembling fact. Look!
A deep pink developing above, there,
in the west! It cannot be saved.

7.
Kindred plays or blocks, the hallucinating
margin above mementos of—
a supplemental neuter deletes
some revenant’s luck. Her.
I dream the awkward dream. I disallow.
On the rug, with paint and trowel,
under stones and ash and the rude
vocabulary of the frost, grammar
disobeys its rules. The western crawl space.
Air and earth aglitter, collide.
Something adds, something subtracts.
How near is the thing that counts, what is it called?


 

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