Taking on the Local Color. Cynthia Genser

the first train

      to town.

      Il pleure sans raison,

      my heart! here—

      you never, after the first year, cared.

      *

      Lust, my fixed

      star.

      Both, how blue,

      azure-headed,

      my revolution.

      To arms! To arms!

      Two arms

      to be held in,

      mother, brother,

      I cannot call you,

      what—fellow sufferer

      or spouse or

      fellow dream-snuffer

      or parasite, partner,

      traitor

      fixed foot.

      *

      The last sentence

      of that book read:

      “évohé, évohé, leaping

      like young horses

      on the banks of the Eurotas.”

      Meaning, you said,

      they had freed their feet.

      And you jumped up,

      fell forward, head down,

      skirt up, head over heels:

      marvelous cartwheeler,

      I remember

      your legs flashed

      scissorlike,

      against the sky.

      This is the fashion, you said,

      to be free (adjusting your hat),

      and you wet your mouth

      and stared;

      but you never really cared.

      *

      Music dreams:

      Cars, battles,

      axes.

      If praxis be the gruel of love,

      play on! Open

      your starry door.

      I throw myself

      on all your shards

      or lie

      beneath your small, glass-slippered feet:

      ecstatic.

      *

      What I want, you wrote,

      is to get rid

      of all this “inwardly revolving.”

      One foot’s fixed:

      you spin.

      Or tacked up

      to some lousy Cross, fall forward,

      the hanged man

      with a broken ankle—

      it makes me spit.

      “Chère petite,” I wrote back,

      “it makes me spit, too.

      Let us make love with whips.

      The Diva Club, at two.”

      *

      Cars dream:

      violins, thighs,

      loss.

      If gnosis be the fool of love,

      drive on. Through desert

      to the micturating sun

      of wetlands,

      the dreamy jungle.

      How richly I deserve you,

      little demon,

      little love-thing, little

      bloody foot.

      Filing

      I look for you.

      The alphabet melts behind a palm,

      soft music. I expect

      your eyes

      a glint of neck.

      Instead I find a garden.

      The name blossoms, the heart pulls

      out come

      gazelles,

      the tip of summer.

      Truth and Satisfaction

      The truth predicate, then, preserves his contact with the world, where his heart is.

       —W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Language

      “Mother,” I addressed her,

      “you have created a monster.”

      Outside

      it was raining, the light

      fell splendidly on silverware and tea.

      She took a sip. She answered

      she was pleased with truth and satisfaction:

      they were enough.

      *

      Fiction

      isn’t truth.

      You hold its brute head down

      until the breathing stops.

      The world, the stiff world

      isn’t truth.

      But it’s where your heart is,

      damaged and complete;

      it sends you to the street

      with a drugged smile

      and the whiskey

      dragging

      like a child of love.

      *

      My mother is Voltairian

      in several ways:

      her hair curls,

      and even terror

      wraps itself around her feet.

      She has, as well,

      an understanding

      with the deep unknown:

      it wounds her lightly

      and she leaves it

      almost

      entirely alone.

      *

      Satisfaction

      has four splayed feet and a teat

      filled with disaster.

      Suck it and know heaven. Just remember

      it goes dry.

      It leaves you, crying

      in your shoes, in

      public places.

      *

      I was planned among the plethora of Geminis

      control allowed.

      My sister is the amorous mistake, martyr

      to an impulse;

      which