The Sleep That Changed Everything. Lee Ann Brown

14150Obaa Agnes Inflorescence153(the good bye)156My epithalamion157Red Fox158Sustain Petal160The Words of Love1623 Rings164Vision Crown166Some Sleep Notes169

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Versions of these poems have appeared

      in the following publications:

      The Baffler, Booglit Boogmark, The Capilano Review, Chain,Combo, Crow, Downtown Brooklyn, Explosive, Fence, The Hat,How2, Insurance, Jacket, No Trees, Oasis Broadside, Pressed Wafer,Primary Writing, Proteus, Skanky Possom, Snare, Verse and in How2 Write Love Poems that Don’t Suck by dELiA’s & Charles Weigl; Miss Traduction:Homophonic Translations from the American, Dutch,French and Latin (Tender Buttons, 1995); Reverse Mermaid / The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Belladonna, 2001); and The Voluptuary Lion Poems of Spring (Tender Buttons, 1997).

      In these Anthologies:

      An Anthology of International Avant-garde Poetry in English, edited by Rod Menghem & John Kinsella (Salt); An Anthology of New (American) Poets, editors: Lisa Jarnot, Chris Stroffolino and Leonard Schwartz;

      The Best American Poetry 2001, edited by Robert Hass; Blood & Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard edited by Scott Gibson; and The Portable Boog Reader, edited by David Kirschenbaum.

      Thank you to all the editors who have encouraged my work,

      and to the curators of readings where these poems first aired.

      The author would also like to thank

      Djerassi Artists’ Residency,

      Foundation Royaumont,

      Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute,

      Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,

      Yaddo

      and

      the Fund for Poetry

      for time and support to work on this book.

      INSUFFLATION

       an act of blowing on, into, or in

       a Christian ceremonial rite of exorcism performed by breathing on a person

       the act of blowing something (as a gas, powder, or vapor) into a body cavity

      It remains (Alice Notley) read poetry

      and imagine yourself writing it

      A poet is a mirror, a transcriber (Susan Howe)

       What are these winged words

      (Jennifer Moxley)

      Other peoples’ vocabularies did this to me.

Auspicious Window

      Between sky & town

      Birds sing Bells ring

      Venus ascends the Starry Stair

      While afternoon comes upon

      Our fair histories

      Sensitive plants touch but

      Stay open past twilight.

      Between rearranged lines

      Walking, lives a moth.

      A flaming sigh

      Takes us past our

      pain almost

      Human Lucky

      A brief Communication

      Fortuitous Window never

      Written, go on

A Call for Vertical Integration in the Eye of the Storm

      Purple & blue Tiffany combo in the

      Church of my childhood struggle of perfect

      Public meat longing again vine-covered

      Power flower conflict hunger for green

      Struggle—if this is sin then separation—

      Grace abounds even more than bonds—

      Doubt boundaries not programmable—

      Stretched grace strikes us down—

      Social eels demand ransom, children

      Do not bow your heads—tranquility of hymns

      Is shattered & addressed two days ago I

      Saw the Black Ash of a Church Burned on its

      Sure Foundation Century old pin oaks scorched

      Against stones of those who can’t ever leave this sight—

      Who witnessed Who

      Drove away during the sermon Burning

Cometary

      Come lay here awhile familiar body of earth

      swelling sweetness I know not yet

      When sexing grows stale so will living so

      not yet to die or be bored by bright

      eyes in the bias of night streaming

      3 am comfortable garlic rose

      honey jasper beryllium iridium

      insulating who knows what from whom or

      what marginalia starts to cook at

      3 pm half way cross to one real world

      writing flash across the sky complete

      with fiery tail Just once is not

      enough how ’bout 4 a minute

      and look up again tonight

      Come here Come tarry

      Comet her

Encyclopedia Botanica

      or

      A Mother-to-Be’s Book of meltdown anticipation and scientific renderings of organic and theoretical forms such as the way flowers lie in the bud: A permutational Cento of Centos consisting of painful insufflations, multiple estivations, the calculus of various inflorescents, my naive set theories (as unordered pairs), vibratory odes in all manner of cross-pollinating color, illumined spores & how they