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Untitled (from "Breathsign")

Andrew Lundgren

I

By candlelight.
autumn's close, close in.
A flicker on cherry
floors with wax stems aglow
on cotton sheets. On cotton sheets
by candle leaves with wine
like obsidian bowls and blankets
to heat bodies. A body.
A body a bones a fur
in barricades in bedspreads
undressed. Cabined
to a hillside, wet
black bows, soft snow hills, wet
leafless bows. Leafless
beneath blankets curled.
A belly pressed back
to curl, back to press
brackish mouth. Tongue, lips,
brackish mouth
down skin sweat
and kiss
tongues against
each body turn
back, head low
over head, low breath
beats with one hand reached
around one hand, around one hand.

II

Come on corrigible end of my rambles,
and after the hash marks are all assembled,
we lower the knots of our furrowed face.

Diacritic marks and all,
diacritic marks and all.

With the hot toddied off wooded up attic rats,
in from the alley to footprint the crock pots,
to dig the grease to the root of our thumbs.

We find what's left with our tongues.

I always want leftovers, not just mine,
but the mint chocolate chip and the
turkey gravy, all yours, admittedly yours,

bundle armed and forest bound.

But how fast can I travel?
How long will it take
to save it all up? In how
big a bag will it be?

A bag bigger than Saturn afloat on the ocean.
everything I can in the rings and
run dust clouds in my gravity.

Eat up the wedding shower
giver gifts and rubber stamped
last pedestrian trade reports.
I'll have it in remembering. In
writing.

There is a junk yard
with every screen
and every part, unless it is not
possible, there is a field where I am
yours as all.

I've been stopped on the hours
at crosswalks and told the whole
balloon will burst a desert full of
skeletons, but only by people from
pulpits, through bars, the podium,
microphone, or book. Hungry?
bring your belly down below your trousers
and eat. I want the bone. I want the vertebrae
and brain stem. There's one where you
beat me down a lullaby grave dance,
down with the cockroaches and rats
in the sewer water, a fiend scavenger fiend
for whatever you got.

Tiss tiddy tiss to a man what
potent supposed to be ambled out and
the line lady crackers tell me what
to walk the lattice smooth with the
back of my shoes. Just like school. Its
caterpillar grass, but there's one where the caterpillars
tell us what to do from behind the
magnified glass in pirouette agony.

III

The only reason i'm not wet
is the umbrella. Hot?
Too hot? I'll turn on the air
conditioning to keep you
reasonable, but i will sleep
the day away. Its turned
to tar mack, I cant go out
in this, my blood will boil
my brains. She cries

go out, go outside, i go outside
everyday and everyday i bring
back beans, you know how i get
them, i go out there, outside.

I try not to cry. I stick my face
in the ice box with the ice and
an empty box of fish. The fish is fine.

The fish with lemon butter
skewer sticks, the fish on
a flat stone, on a flat stone
by the fire, fish on the river
bank flat stone seared up over
the hot coals with the water
spray cold on my thighs,
upright for the wind rush me
tickle bumped and bush out
for the salamanders to gauk,
back down on the pit, face
greased smoke and fingers
buttered lemon fish to eat.

On the bank. But the box
is crumbs and the fish
was fried, but the fish
was fine. The only bit that's
not the bones, the fish is fine.
the only bit I don't know
is where and how she gets
the beans. I've been out
before and seen none and nothing
but its hard to see, and I'm not ever
sure if I've enough to know
for sure anything at all about
all the spots to poach the beans.

I've no reason not to dally,
maybe dally does me in,
but I've no reason i remember
not to chat, but not just
any passer by, but time
to time I find I know not
enough of whats being said
and I dream I understand things.
Malaysia is the best bet for
the Burmese. Thailand's not
bad, but after all not bad
to flee for, a fleer's resort,
perhaps the next best thing,
Thailand. And while the treck
swims in little walking men,
its at the crosswalks I glance
round see nothing, and run.