Lewis LaCook

 

echo and narcissus

it was the wind's smear, she was
saying to her lassitude, or maybe

it was praying to the muscle-god, or
the nerve-god, or cars inching
into the savored space lucidity bends
through the landscape, mostly pavement

anyway-a tree just below her
lineated prose, surely a nihilist,

was repetitive, lining the patch
directing below her belt; it
was nice; there were sesitinas there

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

we behaved like a skylit smudge, she
was said to have intoned, it was
harmonious, by a luminescence of
the throat-god, to have dervished

some trees were sitting, their manners
sanitized; a pelt-patch grappled
with sonnets there, as the wind drove

on-wiping turnstiles from the windshield;
this, she was known to quote, was as
preventative as edification; the erudite crust
laced to the wheels, and nothing funnier

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

I believe the pavement's freckled, she was
Explaining to the cuticle-goddess, like

A minivan dusted for chihuly-prints-
The wind was breaking a pool of similar
Spots along her thighs, much as those flowers

Parted in their mimicry of current-oh no,
The spots were droll, a haiku is

Syllables surrounded; the longer the weight
Encased in luster's pause, the more bitter a
Goddess of infected slices seems; mean
And average, man names his shadows raw

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it was the wind's smirk, she was
said to have quoted a recent goddess
opaque with incisions, that would lead me
down winter's metal gullet-dapple was

a word, as was pt cruiser, and they would
ripen on her tongue while the sky was piping
clearer nerves; the web of it against

her legs as it showered, a riverrun past
eve and adam's, installed a funny
worm that hid itself, obversely as
a villanelle-repeats repeat, refrain

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

as the flag-icon, she was alone-as
the flaw-icon, she was alone-as
the flesh-icon, she was alone-as
the flame-icon, she was alone-as
the icon of flags and flaws and flesh and

flame and fields she was alone-as
she was saying this the wind was
eating her alive-as she was as she
was saying this, the living wind was
eating her-as she was, she was saying

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

we believed that the sky's life was
drudgery, she was saying into
the phonograph's horn-and the pretty

vanity of the young, troubled like urban
development, would creep through the fissures
in the comforting hum of our general motors-

the central nervous system icon ran
memories through our raw names and
found a virus called the central processing

unit-the central processing unit remembered
her name, though it was missing arms and legs