Theriomorphic clouds color of sweet milk cast shade in darkest suit.
Idolatry, a man whacking at weeds
then a young girl lips to the dusty screen door
longing for the neighbor child,
leaves falling into sequence but not category.
Accidental openings of no rest, suffering she walketh along
the burning edges of the garbage bill as if into the day. Satellite
was one of those highlighted words on the spelling sheet because it contained
a double consonant, satellite to guide me, satellite to inform, to frown up at in outer space.
Seconds, minutes tocked as these, fast bug across the floor
will survive into that opening, and soul bargain
the body on its offer, eager in its youth. And extraordinary,
extraordinary was hard, smears of orange along the noun following,
blue violet haze of dusk beneath the screen door, ETC.
Who made the afternoon was a true hell-maker.
Dead, do you camp here under random oak,
a tree to pin down the entropy, leaves' drape?
Is there no covetousness enough, a flow to humanity and other such fleshpots,
accessible phones in the towers we heard ourselves reply to,
to make a winter arbor an espaliered
galaxy—— the whole fabular whole
to unremain, the lawn green
and bilious, a misty absinthian sea
heaving at his feet as God queries from behind
the dry tree and into
a pale truck rumbling neutral then lurching forward
as we take that dark drive together,
in our great gravel of a thirst, God taking his first swig,
You lied about it, the hollow ambrosia, colors of horses, the double fictions of my mouth—
by Gillian Conoley from her book Profane Halo
published by Wave Books
Robin Reagler 