The Sleep That Changed Everything. Lee Ann Brown

the Body. Herein find random factors of the strange attraction to “hard science,” but also to soften it, previously FAILED materials and pick-up works, illuminated maps of misreading, specifically, a Trace Study of my Own Peculiar Vocabulary living in the dictionary, reading public signs backwards or torqued in the House (See: “Waking in the Offices of Dawn,” “A Demand for Fried Chicken,” and “The Unhinged Bride’s Index Box”). A deep pillow tapestry, the soft underbelly of the (not guilty) quilt-lined snow on 100’s of 1000’s of flowers packed in wet newspaper to last this linked act always with an Other in mind: molecules being excited to a higher level of activity by heat or unseen stimulations, through any reader’s eye to correspondence’s finger, culminating in a Splice Index for the edification of Ladies, Gentlemen, Sentences & new Punkish Geezers left out in the rain of the Sleep Cake that changed Everything.

Insufflation

       for Tom Raworth

      Fresh start

      she smokes

      the color of his eyes

      rat, maternal & sexual behavior

      in that culture

      there was husband capture

      the word for inhaling someone else

      “stay” plain

      an insufflating venture

      inventing all the ways of from

      as for me and mine

      we know how water changes

      pitch as it warms up &

      connects the poem’s skin up to

      curvaceous thought

      & open possibles,

      pricks up the spring like

      songs

      my liner notes are

      nonlinear notes

      Linear Velocity

      in a Velocity line

      Children meeting

      you can only try

      Not to subsume

      the title into the poem

      Words like “crank” & “shift”

      “frame”

      Thinking as

      sexually inspired not so

      far from the idea of what

      makes me write

      Vibratory Ode

      Not to work my Vibratory Mode

      was one option

      I close to forego

      What happened to me?

      I tried to be like everybody

      else for a few moments

      out the window

      Insufflation

      loss or relation or

      In your face

      elation

      suffered inflation

      Play it in its

      identification

      I feel like I can’t read

      people’s poems

      without loving them

      Just having met he said

      Tell me everything right now

      & give it to me right now on stone

      tablets right now please

      My other story:

      Upon trying to find some Barbecue

      in Greensboro, NC on a Sunday night

      & upon the suggestion of

      a restaurant named I forget what,

      She said, “No, that’s Black Tie”

      & I thought she meant

      “Pigfoot with Lemongrass”

      I can tell Electricity

      I’ve often been too literal & try

      Always to fly over the wings

       And what does a body do without its desires?

      It tries to get them back (Carla Harryman)

      I’m your irreversible Holiday Guest

      The phone rang as we walked in the door

      Sorry we missed each other

      any exchange of info

      or Phraseology

      I limit my register

      Relegation Regulation

      Regulating

      the specifics of her

      encircling the rhythmic phrase

      Embrace loneliness & get over it

      “What’s normal to you

      is strange to me”

      Muscle in on

      Collage as a grid

      I am read

      What would you like

      (Morningfade)

      Too late to lay straight out

      Music spins too short to cut back

      Amazingly unformulaic exchange of modes

      No memory any more than

      writing without remembering

      Mural pout icy blue irises taste salty

      Negative lotion or prosthetic nerve

      Too beautiful for use

      Exclusive of description

      Distant radio blur pensive not

      some kind of horrible rhythm

      Grinning mask

      The black church vibrates

      That’s not nice

      I’ll tell you a story

      Meager income not sleep

      Driver to tense up the flowers

      Fetch the muscular job

      Lack thereof when indifference flutters

      Not impressed by personality

      Scratch “Music”

      Hanging up the phone

      Any trick to sit still

      Dependent on time not motor vehicles

      In the mode of

      grabbing the meat

      Money exchanged hands

      Laying the book flat

      She worked it out

      The sunlight offered solution

      Calling in sick

      the ceiling crumbles

      Stages of dreaming

      travel & funeral

      Forgetting the text

      Deserted not waiting

      a titular running away

      Writing for the “ing”

      Every click startles my little