from
MVSR #1 (SPRING 1999) Andrew Schelling Dream Haibun The restaurant's classy but run down, a bit seedy, the oak tables need waxing. Burgundy wallpaper's stained from rough nights. And it's stuffy -- scarlet curtains cover the windows. Susan, Georgette, Betsy, Cassandra, all at one table. They're in petticoats and complicated old dresses, black garters, high lace-up boots -- I think we're in the ghost-town whorehouse in Blackhawk. Years now since I've seen them and it's not much fun. They look different, weird, talk funny. I guess they went and got married. ....................Under one roof ..........sleeping with all of them -- ....................bush clover, poker chips. Haibun at Buckskin Lake Floral perfume, nights of long love, vast conversations with razor-sharp scholars. But who is that, up in high jagged hogbacks sleeping exposed on a rock? What does he do, crack ice over his primus stove for a drink? Feet sticking out of a mummy bag, he's wandering lost in a dream of jade maidens. It was Yunte's ideogram led me astray. I woke up in stunted pines a thousand years later -- alpine forget-me-nots in my whiskers. ....................You ask how they ..........toy with us mortals -- ? ....................get a field guide to the tundra. FEATURED WRITER Stephanie Williams ARE rather indigenous in the family of. Yes. Yes and I know where this land comes from. An evolutionary scale we hold dear as are held away to seek, ever finding the anthropologist. Behind this trailer sit pregnant women made by God eating chalk. SHALL YOU UNCOVER (an acrostic chance) Socialism: a man I'm sure, a Hero who struggles east. As we wish: to have Left it to Live in the city of New York. Yet existence Of zebras blows back and forth on the line Upon his canvas beaches. Under mercury light the little pup strives. Night-long Cross country runner. Of wind: Vilna Eyes in Goya's painting are soft, Reading. Hero, who struggles east On the line Now Everything Yet exists. World Has gone down! Everything -- Religion that would set man apart -- Everything! Mind As we wish Gathering the gold wool from the cannibal sheep Goodness, I say, Of wind The world is something not enough people dream of. Senses quicken in the thick of the symphony: As we wish -- Religion that would set man apart Everything else in the world going on here. Rachel Levitsky from Cartographies of Error Catorce The first choice we make is the method of our burial. Ashes, like stars, fall more visible in the desert. The colors are consistent the mountains are moving. Desert lines form as a circle angles are difficult to swallow when there are 360 degrees. Choosing myths, like scarves, we exchange position on the perimeter. Once again, we are passing the cemetery. Cemetaria. We are seekers. We are seen. À vol d'oiseau. By the flight of a bird. You see a town, a cemetery, desert, the group of them. Fijate. Pay attention. The driver and his two lice-ridden sons. The truck. Several windows cracked. It is gray. A long stick between the driver and his boys. La puta. That's me. It's her. * * * Ithaka is god-like but hasn't got a clue bitter birth, shallow water the obstacles Water, never more than waist- deep, calm, though red, from clay & littered with rocks fallow fingers reach each has more sides than a moon Once decided where to begin, drew a map of where it began and have attempted to redraw it ever since Many instances have been documented of cartographers using their imaginations to fill what would otherwise be blanks on the map, as in Swift's quatrain. Blank spaces are there to be filled, however unlikely the results. (Geoff King, Mapping Reality) Between the error and its fix lies slip of tongue, Told to excavate our beginnings we pay poorly the interminable Race, not, no beginning, no end but what is real in Ithaka Toe-stub, infected rodents, who need to eat * * * She makes good with the driver. They stop for cerveza. Una caja. La puta now on the other side of the stick. What makes one city "romantic" is its gender ambiguity. The desert is always masculine. What makes a lover romantic, is her clarity. Unwavering clarity. Signified in the gestures. As soon as she wavers we enter the film version. When she still loves you it is black and white & out of focus. When she has found someone it is Kodacolor/Panavision. At the end of the road the desert does not end. They turn left, turn their attention. The plant is not exactly a bush, not exactly a cactus. They are searching for the masculine -- told it will reveal itself in odd numbers; the best numbers are those that cannot be divided. * * * Ithaka is god-like but hasn't got a clue bitter birth shallow obstacles map the way |
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The work of these poets and others
can be read at Mungo vs. Ranger's website at
www.mungovsranger.com, accessible from the bottom of the Big Bridge home page. Mungo vs. Ranger's new fall issue will be released September 1. |