Ryan Flaherty
FROM LIVE FROM THE WOODLEY PARK MARRIOTT, WASHINGTON DC
PART 10
But some things place the mirror too close:
I am breathing continuously, every day
is a new bloody scalp, the need
for salt stitches in and in towards
a wide inertia.
For instance: being
an oeniphile, but refusing to let a little
drunkenness get in my way, I see the tree
out front as having the surly and recurring
tussle of a good glass of wine held
completely in the curve of the mind,
notwithstanding the birds that steadily
fall out and around my feet
which isn’t the real story. I keep hoping
you will interrupt me, which means
break me along my siliques. I am becoming
a little crowded and can barely stand it,
personally, but I look regardless.
My listesso tempo, my down in the ditch.
If only I were allowed to say,
to say and say.
PART 11
For clarity: it was the first rain
in 73 years to dampen Cairo's streets
instead of evaporating mid-air.
This is something special indeed
says our tour guide.
The long standing inhabitants of Cairo’s
City of the Dead have been removed
to make room for the poor.
The next morning’s weather
walled the eyes, hard
to distinguish sand from clotted air.
Would you believe me if I say
we walked right by the pyramids,
not seeing? We did, we did.
The natives told the Europeans eggplants make you mad
and for the two weeks they were "observed" one of them
pretend raged around the village. "That’s what happens," they said.
Humans will believe anything. It was Europe’s principle
knowledge on eggplants for 140 years.
All day advice is local.
The advice is never be owned.
PART 12
For clarity: the I in this poem is an ecology of I,
you, an ecology of you, a flockwise us
Two weeks ago all of this would mean
differently. What are you with,
and what is a randomness of attention,
an experiment with temporality.
And who would I be if I were to hang up now?
Break it wide, finally, open and over.
Who would I be if I let go?
What happens when I say St. Anthony's pigs?
The Monks of St. Anthony, Jan Mandijn 1500-1588, Den Haag: the monks
cared for the sick in exchange for letting their pigs run the streets.
Perihelion, peripetia
Ecology of question,
of reveille.
A clean suit is pressed and ready
for what is going to happen,
which is going
to happen
now
PART 13
now
it is over.
Where is that divisive clefting into actual day? How close
is useful, how wide is the exacting wound?
And if death is a body completely
distracted, what of a mind?
In the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman, 1656,
the curious hover, all forceps and eyes,
around the opened skull of a thief.
Here is how this thing lived, peeling
back bone and flesh,
here is the dark, insuppressible patch
of wrong.
Don’t do that again
I tell my hands.
Advice from Houdini, December 7, 1879:
There is air between a river and its ice,
breathe there as long as it takes to get out.
The missing person’s report
for the 7 years I spent between
thaws (though I was right here
among us) reads:
PART 14
A coat falling in a mirror is not
a person even if it’s someone else’s
and you are the only one who sees it.
Touching your own head in absolution
will count for nothing. Horizon
is one word for many, like flock or I,
a peeled orange has no appreciation,
its lips are rind raw.
Notes on the Preparation of Bluefish:
Heavily oiled blue flesh highly perishable.
Keep cold religiously.
In need of lemon, rosemary.
The drain stoppered up with its scales.
I put them in like contacts.
The blur of thick water,
waiting for the 5 o’clock
glass of wine to reach
5 o'clock—head of flowers.
It is easy to cease to exist.
However, ceasing to cease.