Tuesday, July 25, 2006

The trunkless tree was threatening me.

I'm enjoying the work of poet Heather Christle. I came across her poems in Octopus #6, an online journal. "Five Poems for America" are particularly great. I've adapted/stolen the following lines from this poem for something I'm working on (see below):

Magnificence comes
in a small car, but we all fit.

The title of this post is from her Trunkless.


Have you seen this? A guy, through a series of trades or barters (14 in all) manages to trade his initial single red paperclip for an actual house in a small Saskatchewan town. And I wasn't able to trade my liver for a salami.


Magnificence comes

to our small ears, but we all fit

teeth on a small jawed shark

a thousand people on an island no bigger than

any green noun or

pink earhole

Some think our small ears

which are magnificent and

radiant fetuses

Magnificence in a tiny car

shouldering the pink road

an unfurled map, giant Ontario ear

fluttering the rolled-down half dawn

How do we know

the thousand shrunken ears of stars

a pink light reaching

very brief Marx brother time

atto and zepto and yoctoseconds

the disco ball in the heart

a mosaic of shiny blood

Jack Robinson! he has no time to blink

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