petal organs
churchlike, we laminate what light we have left over from the mints of these sorry gestures of veils: evangeline, given as what we learn to say, although, often: a sigh pressed. as for what we split with a tiny axe by crease of lip what smokes, or faints in breaking but it was there, in dark lit by cattle belly, dropped my mother’s drawl, made widower my voice in grass with one good knife and so, went soundly soundless for all my losses were wetted unto meadow/light ; as well the might to wait for words, though preyed over, soaked harshly, to wander back in their trailing gowns and be in some brutal arithmetic cumbersome, as gun cotton delicate, and not nimble have i been toward what of their bodies is left like matthew’s which went to war sleeping and palely went to where i put a choir voice once and found it too savage to mean; as in exile, with no made up country to be loosed unto, in the way she wanders words as they are are too hotly folded, fly buttoned, leather gloved or dressed passed knees for mass as mary francis margaret anne marie rose and i, wherein the foyer a heavy chest we with bobby pins would lay our heads to clothe and purse our forms of dirty learning for the porcelain virgin erect whose obvious organ for faith ever snared we felt in blouses endangering but our brothers who had guns relieved cotton sock, would unsurely into bad words, arcades of, their fifteen my twelve or thirteen and my figure then meandered and was as a tub watched filling as to not rot the under or linoleum and by caught in the longer legs of someone’s catholic daughter , i mean by matthew often and rather latin water to and in tall grasses and though wonder/rust, would not by matthew suffocate my one and wither beggar flower, so long as bays and totes bruises, no unfondling or any mute trade, no catechism or lamp to study funeral so that even in white surrenders, what was (uttered) did not covet me, or take and return me: all tracks back to me aning scrapped for the war but would and sell for locomotion the tender angles, all but those in one red wing, supple as eardrum, low, no bait laid for the trapper when all that glows and only privy to its sounds, which are un bear able, unable, unbear, un um bear, um, uh, so as to, bear, so tremble, want to, your weight, , so as to, your um, as we of with and sweat, no make, as we and cannot be but and want of this, bare able, un bare, uh bear un bare, um uh, so as to say, um, uh want to but um no. and by was set to petal organs played at times to skin dream waste and swallow our bliss’s blisters (made of shroud,) storm mouthed, paddling, stragglers if as is could lie well, swear to be unflooded, but all soft place to convey is flooded, the where to say I WANTED TO WITH YOU in trembling; was after what we would be as so so from wing to reddening where evangeline wanders toward a louder love as i toward and offer mercy sung like something that was sleeping stung and swell as with and am as if asundering; for i have now only one but the last red black fox psalm. though even it will not have me.
Ekleksographia:
Wave 4.1.c
August, 2010
Poetry
Jackqueline Frost
Jackqueline Frost was raised in the trembling prairie by Appalachian snake handlers, and now lives in the Bay Area with her typewriter. Her poems have been featured recently in The Walrus, Try! and the Big Bridge anthology of New Orleans writers and artists. When "Jack" isn't panning for fool's gold in the hills of Northern California, she buries wine bottles to dig up later and toasts to Edna St. Vincent Millay and the fall of the Right.