The Porcupinity of the Stars. Gary Barwin

do it, I said in my sleep

      it’ll be the end of you, I said

      but my wife was already writhing

      making divots in the sod

      her left leg thrashed

      then split the picnic table in two

      fast-food wrappers filled the sky

      and the swimsuits of the ancients

      released their chlorine

      I woke from my thousand-year slumber to see

      the sun

      born from the womb of my wife

      daylight returning

      blinkless and new

OPTICS, METEOROLOGY AND GEOMETRY

      I accept nothing

      as true

      I carry my thoughts

      a long way

      I consider the difficulties

      I leave nothing out

      unless it

      recognizes me

      I avoid the rain

      I try to love the snow’s blank stare

STAY HERE WARPED HYPOTHESIS

      I must remember to dismember

      the moribund hopscotch of my guffaw

      my cortical scrabble

      the angelic bread-breeder wisdom

      that clouds the knees

      Was there ever a time when

      the mailbox was corpulent with spent fish

      my tongue a horror of patchwork facemask bosons

      stalemate boomerang fortitude clogging my arms?

      But I expect you’ve heard about

      the moving elbows of my attempts to multiply

      my skin set upon a mast

      and the shapely blade of water

      creasing my cow-friendly

      chest hairs in the crepuscular zither

      Ride with me in the woodblock

      a premonition of slack

      and a thousand birds buffeting

      torrents of my eye-bleached ballet

      Let me speak plainly:

      in the creaking corner

      a toolbox sorrow and the tonsils

      a reply of desk bus overalls and

      a tithe on the ledge of before-I-was-born

      I run

      I satiate

      I porous gratitude in the rust-bound palaver

      you are a shrewd arithmetic of mention

      the recanted pyjamas of scent

      Mention me

      O statutory gasp of the nosedive

      Together, we are a nebula on the precipice of sport