The Mirrormaker. Brian Laidlaw

       Echo’s Ailments

      to call something harmless admits

      a certain potential

      for harm (love is not & neither

      is unknowing)—

      homes on dead-flats sink

      into prairie sinks; gradations

      from landslide to landfall

      to rock-fall to rockabilly to rock-a-bye

      bifurcate the county—

      we watch half a mountain collapse

      like a stroked face, then we

      help the half that didn’t

      collapse collapse

Hatches

      tallnorthcountrygirl is the tallest

      landmark

      man looks up her skirt

      madams too whistling

      downtown

      (she necessitates downtown)—I would like your eye

      level, I would like a haystack to climb

      your effervescence

      tallnorthcountrygirl thrills

      the bees of the brush

      I love you so much I want you

      to walk in a trench wheresoever

      you walk

      beside me

      here

      I’ll dig it

Iron Ironworker

      the world’s largest handwritten promise, the world’s largesse

      the largest choir of mouthless, of eyeless,

      of coins in their eyes & mouths

      the pale ground-dwellers sport

      the world’s largest malfunctioning optic nerve

      the world’s largest hollow red balloon

      imitating a crater

      made by the largest volcano the world’s ever imagined,

      the world’s overlarge largesse

      the world’s largest open pit

      sore, the open mine shutting the world’s largest sunroof

      the largest fall rollover ever viewed from the world’s largest

      desk, the largest sun, & the darkest,

      & the darkness that siphons the world’s largest sunroom

Twin Brothers Drowning in a Flooded Ore Pit

      There were cliffs to get knocked unconscious stepping from, walls

      a dinghy dashes apart against,

      many-a-boy’s aqueous grave, the burdens

      stirring below, a knot of metals

      impressive as the world’s largest iron sculpture of a man sculpting iron.

      Your bodies choke on behalf of your lungs, your hands are oars, dumbly, such

      castoffs, such postconsumer finitude

      in the pit ponds,

      a cupid punchout astern—

      I can’t tell if utility is always mutual (It isn’t)

      I wish I were fine in layoffs (You’re never)

      I think the shit of life settles out, the slick thermoclines—

      I think hierarchy is romantic—

      you become it, it becomes you.

The Sparrows

      the sparrows dirty

      the windows

      with red

      spreadeagle sparrow prints

      they take turns committing

      pretend suicides

      striking the kite paper morning

      like typewriter mallets

      all Xs

      they dance a dance

      called formerness

      Echo is them

Medicine Cabinet Inventory

      the cigar man & the cigar box is one

      the cigar man & the box & the boxcar

      is one

      the box guitar & the vox & the voice box &

      the talkie is one

      the echo is another

      the coda in the corner the doorman the coatman the

      eyeless fox &

      his eyelets is one

      the honey leaf cigar & the honey leaf

      & the honey is one &

      the echo is another

The Dinosaurs

      //

      the dinosaurs died

      in a red cloud the kids learnt

      in our good schools

      our world class

      approaches

      I like to watch a hill unfurl to me

      like a woman wearing a flag for a dress

      this I like to happen

      at all tempos—I am not hasty

      I am not like a halogen light or a hydrogen bomb

      & I am not crude like oil—

      I am refined like oil

      //

      our good school’s children

      came from monkeys

      the dolomitic white earth is white with