The Sleep That Changed Everything. Lee Ann Brown

      Back sliding emotion

      Curious about devolution

      Too busy or not so (with the dailies)

      Balance sheets tear my eye

      A star staring

      Forcing myself on myself

      Auto treble singes the cut

      Extra “E” why kill a moth?

      Harsh detail driven in with a nail

      Phraseology stiffens and pumps

      Missing its next opportunity

      Working together for a moment

      As if compatibility were a muscle

      Too much resistance

      Preponderance too normal

      Spoiled bourgeosie me

      What could they have but beauty

      Backwards medal a moment

      nerve out still proceeding

      stacatto endurance

      tongue tied missive never arrived

      or even called

      never picked up

      as in the machine hung up

      not like I imagined

      a cricket under the fridge

      plate goes back to sleep

      “spot” as percussive

      derivative protest

      byzantine frustration

      under any circumstance

      either deal or freak

      momentum taboos the corner store

      Easter morning alone

      Setting myself up to be toughened

      a spectrum of hair

      Unanthologized Beat

      spun out into

      reading it sometimes to myself

      see if I can still

      end up waiting no matter what

      might as well find a way to work

      Need a scar a notice stressed

      Struck through quotation marks

Poet’s Complaint

      Exercising the drill bit in my mouth

      I am past working for the man

      Yet must do it again—

      Again do it must I

      Like every poor sod

      Guiltily sapping on lazy-nesses

      Bed of down right Southern

      Insolence—Mules & Drugs

      Sleepy of culture

      Culture of sleepy

      Walking in pumps sumped

      Out to yards of S. O’Hara’s spoiler.

      Miss Scarlet Mars on Venus moons:

      O Muser be my Abuser!

      Wake up—Atalanta’s burning!

      When will I again be evicted

      From this Divine Sepulchre?

      When will I get my jump

      Astarted from above?

      Athena should be leaner

      Brand me again

      With the mark of the Breast!

      I need a Wing Haven

      I need a Thrush Band

      Of gypsies holding

      Mirrors to my waste.

      I need a Lark who sings

      So out of tune so as to

      Shake me to my roots—

      But please can you make it not hurt

      So much

      Like last time?

      Pull my hair only hard enough

      To make it

      Grow greener than grass

      & Death seem so near

      But not yet here

Respond to me

      Respond to me: how many

      iniquities have I and fish. Scholar me

      & delicate easterns to me.

      Simple curs abscond with you

      & are arbitrarily inimicable to you?

      Against leaves, what raptors I buy

      East and potentates to aim

      and stipendly sic’em on persecutors:

      Writers & enemies against my sailor lovers

      consume me, consume my fish

      my many sad scents

      Positronic in my nervous pedestals

      & observing all vastness

      my many cementings

      & my vestigial feet meow considerately:

      How quasi I redo considerable sums, how

      invested, how comedic a tin ear.

shiny jewel eye

       with Julie Patton, Euphrosyne Bloom & Meg Arthurs in mind

      These flower forms vary to me in ways I can’t say yet but you know already before me in your dress lace—no “A” on the off white (cream) lady bugged familiar to the wall pointing to Big Ohio Egyptian football in & out motion of your arms passion freak—out on our own time—to the triumphs flower—the stole slipped, the slip stole—no limits on the feintly fealty couch—passive as he was—(I’m huge)—the hinge bing-cherried out & tweaked on the Byronic road ironic—drownded in the lake of Prague’s Guarda—Valve without me—he’s—free—and Sphinx-like as I write the night again so quick—The Dion Ferry is X-otic—water taxied over Manhatta’s spires

      where (back in time) she was living in Alphabet City with all the little stories she never tells:

      While throwing an apple peel over her shoulder she suddenly realizes she’s been living in Description City all along. A big, blue letter “A” is motioning for her over to take off her veil and play, but she says ‘fuck that’ while chewing on her candy cigarettes. The Phantom Tollbooths, otherwise known as the Fuss Puppets, are now warming up in the room covered entirely with writing. One says “Dogmatic No Radio” and another, just “Spike.”

      Ms. (Blank) was trying to think but it was real hard because of all the buzzing. People kept trying to get her attention and succeeding. She had started to live alone once, but like honey he started living there too, postponing her growing up for a few more months.

      She lived in the zone whose even years no solstice interrupt. A certain surgeon had a beautiful garden there. He stuttered even further when trying to speak his own name. There remains a small scar on her forefinger where she cut herself in the university kitchens. Blood ran all down her apron as she inadvertently hoisted the large carrot, repairing back to her room. A Russian Formalist toy made of colored wood was waiting there.

      She converted to Sarah Beattyism, then more slowly to Quietism. Single Girl, Single Girl, Goes where she please.