Scantily Clad Press, 2009
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to the editors of the following journals who first published these poems, sometimes in slightly different versions:
Cannibal: from erros “[The mere existence of emphasis]” and “The Savant Pores, the Sex Easygoing”
Coconut: “sPacific Ode” and “Aubade” Fou: “Memento Mori” Noon: A Journal of the Short Poem: from erros “[Of -scape-grace]” and “[Remember]”
Tight: “Homage to Francis Bacon I” and “Song of the Idiot Bulk”
Desire that hollows us out and hollows us out, That kills us and kills us and raises us up and Raises us up. -Robert Hass
That the syllables!
-Ronald Johnson
Poem The body’s the affliction. And the -iction, the -ection? What of the otherbody vivid out of knowwhere slowing? The quick & brink we become accompanied with? What’s prone stranded in mapblack in subred. My Indicatives,
when desire is weak be over, be done, it will have seemed right in this Unglish to mean , to outlust.
sPacific Ode Overopposides–– an underlit down-roar
rawther.
Whelmes (more or restless of re-, of de-) soon’t ankle-deep answerable. Thistinctions
this too-do
end of June: tilt-masts & sails
somehow anyhow
swung & high. Less vivident— that smooth middle
proof,
this sink-a-think plunge, these
high interiors of the se[e] . Vaults-chant quiet. Underrupting. -for Barbara Cully
Homage to Francis Bacon I Criss-couple crosse-messed. Pulverous the postures. Grimmatical touchlines co-here-ing as bash. Big moreboys in pumps
at knot.
Flung-fucked. Fragile. Bald-bright in the afterdamp. Semi-sided–– peenings, un-pent, the bodies’ rote riggings (blood-dumb-suddenly) loosed. Violence its own destined -ation. Desire– hack-deep; pink &
casual.
Song of the Idiot Bulk This somewhat song. From light to what’s left, may I dulge it? -Inguistically? In the last of the light, the disassembling light (ruin-yellow blew), may I sing them–– this duskguise, this strew-dark. Oxygen (its sweet knees), & in silm mutely. Of this mouth, that little open (winning soft, occupliable), enjoying upclose, or coming (shakesbelieve) to try––its angles.
Showmoving song of salted greenshine (waves, flash-jointed plunges, runs)–– may I sing it? From night to what’s left of this brunt’s untaught soft esoteries. Its whole helve & swelltips; its betworks & keepings; __-lusions of if thrilled loose, & its every small prone (in noiselets as vigories). Sung as if sayparate. Mademost, madeleast of light & what’s heft––
the mind, that kinking topknot where it is
blood to remember.
How
as shirtsgo haste language is strangelets. Ambigracious. First enough.
Erros My latest found , my sakesbelieve, this nakeshift is–– my ownly
l=u=n=g=u=a=g=e.
Of -scape-grace–– how to put it grimmatically? Of these changing seensuns, this -ness-ness, (so mouth-colored)
mon share,
how remember now
means we once was others’
why’s?
Remember doing andstands under a vast etceterra of aim-blue sky ends up ending ?
The mere existence of emphasis–– a tramp O line . O
(that ‘ccurs)–– lust’s fed focus for the little louds & outs of yore’s on-and-on eloqwhence. Nounsense for this this stelléd else––
sprent,
disgathering night (its bulk flicker-heavied)
Moreover, the moon. Reflecting on its duskguise–– coeurious, amourtell.
Luke-summer thaw-breeze–– sumthing
uhbove
roamembered suntinuing as -ous rehind kiss-lids & thunkfully
(. . . sick-tock [sic]-talk . . .) kiss’oclock in the mournin’–– our barebodied bedst & the sun noone-due
mmmmmemory . . .
Think-skinned, I lacks alone in seeclusion. Only these seize-ons, this whether & even these–– into thin err
The Savant Pores, the Sex Easygoing There is no mattering that is not ours. Hours when sake’s done most enough, taken for holdable. As meatpack in fuckery— the blood’s hectivities when we is not gently. But sound-sided. Choicelessly skinsideout, though shareful for being so.
Homage to Stan Brakhage What is a bodye deprived of its adjectives? Soulipsism? Skimatics? Laved, loosed, letulled---Airhow unasked for, limbited to unremembering. The unexceptionable in in which the packed pieces abide. after “The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes”
Plainsong (For One) Plays attentions. Plays bides & goes weak w/ another’s ponderable body. Plays emphas, plays is. Catapult & condoles. Luke-sick & sweaty w/ boundary (vivident volving verge), plays sometimes boil to others on mess-sheets taking a long dying often time. Each draw,
each repeat plays speculations. Ardors— the randoms grim. Appetitive. Debauch. Hale ‘gainst ex& lossly when ruining too easy. When underdying, unintentioned. Plays the stills consecutively. W/ out complining.
His Little Deathling on Being Prone My beautiful beforehand---decrep painted wide. My midsting handscape---weren’t they showmantic . . . Land-roughed, air-toughed something thigh here now, something thinlet, your dim-lit mingle, your true. Grudgework glozed; blinkhard loverhood untroublously strew: zipper-shriven. You?
Memento Mori O
bright confines -Ronald Johnson
We live on the gathering side as mingle
as outdulge
where lies kindly distract from the sick-spoon from the lunks’ jungs & our skin (spikeless twinlipspink)–– their throughency cramming bare whereabouts (the oceanwork dark) w/ howabouts
as if diminish
meant (should mean) for Katherine Larson
Aubade O Causes . . . -Barbara Guest
Waking to must, there are those who want to bruise in god’s hands. On eye-catch, eye-volved memorial distances ––(rule-half, half water)–– they brood. But where sound opens zound, where up breaks sibilant, where coastwise fadings fold
& openair-suddenly
all tenses are born.
-scending
A dead-bless pull on the body––
a body (nakeshift & brine-slung, wet-greened & pleas’d),
built for resistence among the waves. Hear his pent bulk
singing: O
scatter! O idiot rummage! Here hymnself junelooking for clear lacknowledgements which are allmost ‘causes––
Omost causes. Their immense grammaries.
NOTES The phrase “high interiors of the se[e]” is a variation on Herman Melville’s phrase “high interiors of the sea” which appears in Moby Dick. The italicized portion in “Song of the Idiot Bulk” is taken from Hart Crane. I have borrowed the phrase “The mere existence of emphasis” in “erros [The mere existence of emphasis]” from Frank O’Hara’s poem, “In Memory of My Feelings.” The line “The body’s the affliction . . .” is taken from Charles Wright’s poem “After Reading Wang Wei I Go Outside to the Full Moon.” “Homage To Stan Brakhage” is for Lisa Jarnot. The title “The Savant Pores, The Sex Easygoing” is the first line from a poem by Samuel Beckett. Some phrasings in “Aubade” are misprisions of Barbara Guest.
Morgan Lucas Schuldt is the author of the poetry collection Verge (Parlor Press: Free Verse Editions, 2007) and Otherhow (Kitchen Press, 2007), a chapbook. His poems have appeared in Fence, Verse, and LIT; online at Shampoo, Coconut, and Typo; and in the anthologies Prose Poetry /
Flash Fiction: An Anthology (2006), The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, Second Floor (2007) and Best New Poets 2007. A brief essay on the poet Larry Levis appears in A Condition of the Spirit: The Life and Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington University Press, 2004), and an interview with Charles Wright has been collected in Charles Wright in Conversation: Fifteen Interviews. A graduate from the University of Arizona’s MFA program, Morgan lives in Tucson where he edits the on-line literary magazine CUE and the chapbook series CUE Editions.