Drunken Boat #14

Sheaves ~f G l @ a s s.

 


three transparent stalks of wheat made out of glass and tied with brown twine, against the sky
Three wheat stalks from The Glass Wheatfield by Jacqueline Berting:
the field contains 14,000 waist-high, transparent, individually-crafted glass stalks of wheat.





A black and white engraving of a boy reclining in a rowboat on the sea
The boy in the boat, Scéaf (Njord): wheat, spear, and shield, original artist unknown;
engraved by L. B. Hansen. Reproduced from Den Poetiska Eddan
(Poetic Edda) by Nils Frederick Sander (1893).


Neither glass nor wheat are native to North America.

Glass trade beads were first introduced to Arizona and New Mexico by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján in 1540. The first North American glass factory was established in Jamestown, Virginia during 1608.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus brought wheat to the New World. Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro carried wheat from Spain to Mexico by boat in 1519. Beginning in 1540, missionaries and conquistadors first took wheat from Mexico to what is now Arizona and California. However, wheat was first grown productively, on an island just off the Massachusetts coast, in 1602.




A black cloth backdrop with a single large, light-gray shard of glass
Kristallnacht. Glass shard on black cloth.


PROLOGUE

 


From our gaps protrudes something
          that looks like leaves——but is not——

Kristallnacht

world divided
into two parts…

places where
we could not live
and those
we could not enter…

…on the Ho Chi Minh trail
          a Memphis gunner
          raises hand to heart pocket—

                    his fingers      push      into
Marlboros  | marrow | blood
glass syringe snaps
          in the medic’s shudder:hand

He was binding sheaves, the gunner’s widow wails
In the field…tying together…

But his sheaves stood up, separate…
The others bowed to them…
          and then >
          a shattering >   =   America




Black and white archive photo of young African man shirtless and smiling with his arms crossed
Ota Benga, of the Mbuti people, was captured by slavers,
taken from his land near the Kasai River (formerly the Belgian Congo),
and put on display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.


displays Apache and Mbuti
as exhibits

at the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair
human zoo
dubbed The University of Man

while our mother      pregnant      knits
          eves
winter—Nebraska

hot bricks to warm the bed
          scent of venison stew      /      woodstove smoke
          weight the air

months she clicks for her unborn
needles 2mm handspun      pale jade      wine and ivory

booties+overalls+cardigans+caps
her afghans, as time
unfurls, wrap
trains+autos+jets+machineguns+laptops

sudden daffodils
          then her broken water
          in the wagon

firstborn, a son
she bleeds out

  husband cradles her——weeps                          absent—her pulse drum
she bleeds out                                                       dark matter
she bleeds out                                                       a world…worlds
          of string and
          strings

she bleeds out

one small kick  :  a cry

   I Didn’t Birth
           My Boy
to Be a Soldier



She                                                                                                Bleeds
Out—————————————————————————————




Black and white photograph of the Mojave Desert, with mountains in the background and scrub and gravel in the foreground
Mojave Desert.


I.

into this Holi parade ~ Brooklyn          curry breeze
tossing colored powder
at hennaed children
who toss back

pull coiled cords < the dancers’ masks open, revealing
second
            no, endless                            inner beings

Let us wander then                            ~
             to our Mojave…drifts   )   )   to desiccate…
             occipital/saguaro
             fallopian/ocotillo

our inhalations on the playas:
             greasewood
             sagebrush
             thymus & thyme
datura binds scapula                        our seepwillow vas
             deferens                    hip dewthrust
your labia now fringed                      with dozens

of reef-blue eyes
like a Florida bay
scallop

A few more piercings | a few routs | a reaching
‘round of limbs |
slick
of menstrual broth
Flesh tears on the yucca, creosote

Come, bandage me                with your hair
and sweetmilk ejaculate
                                               of tarbush—

II.

 


—thus repaired, I know it is

            f *   impossible
                  to love
                  without sacrifice   f *

            to the dove       of America’s day in this world




Black and white photo of a humpback whale breaching
An adult humpback whale, approximately 79,000 pounds, breaching.


Sequoia queens sprouting ~~
~~ endlessly ~~ from their boles ~~

~~ a pipevine swallowtail tasting ~~
~~ through its feet ~~

~~ today ~~ like Costa’s hummingbird ~~
~~ we eat twice our weight ~~

~~ in penstemon nectar ~~
~~ strip and cloak ~~ with Savannah graybeards ~~

~~ of Spanish moss ~~ the brittle frillery ~~
~~ and clasp ~~ a female leatherback turtle ~~

~~ diving 4,000 feet ~~ on one breath ~~
~~ then deeper still ~~ agate darkness ~~

~~ at last north ~~ through blue whale ~~
~~ blood vessels ~~ large enough for any person ~~

~~ to trespass ~~

The bare of them—of their nature—
And our nakedness———————a herald, a gift!

Our groom of ah’s straining
in the western holster,
our second life of southern dreams

walking the sky

to Pollock                of the east, so strummed
by stream~flex
that he doesn’t bother to mix—
            or even use                  a brush

Yep, at the deepest level of Bang : Crunch,
we are one United
                                                       plumb
                      subcutaneous                        thrum

III.

 


hum > Oklahoma
Choctaw okla humma———”land of the red people“




Black and white archive photo from 1912 showing a Native American man in traditional dress next to his son wearing European clothing
Pawnee father and son, Oklahoma, ca. 1912.


Enters our Pawnee chief, 1892                    earrings clapping
scalplock and porcupine roach
buckskin war shirt
bottleglass bead bolo

he watches
starving settlers gather
logs!twigs!hay!leaves!sunflowerstalks!buffalochips!
           to build him a fire

Fools, he mutters              =              Build great big fire
                                                         And have to get a
                                                         Long ways from it.

                      fx                We build a little fire
                                        And sit around it.     fx
I rise in straw hat / rope suspenders        a pioneer child
                                                                               to greet him:
               Chaticks-si-Chaticks        The “Men of Men”


I this girl or boy
breast pocket bulging with jerked buffalo
stiff as bone for chewing

together we hand sickle
all day              barefoot
pants rolled high
whistling through the wheat fields

one tin cup < we share
            the water crock

            and cracked old cornpone
            honeycomb
            crabapple compote

            from my tin lunch pail
he helps me to bind the field~leavings—
                          —and we make glass

                                                  Deaths of sand
                                                           =
                                               A Birth of glass




Photograph of a wheat field in stark black and white
Oklahoma Wheat by Dorothea Lange, 1938.


IV.

 


So you loafe with me now… among our sheaves…
a shattering…a chiming

How we rest now in December
atop our postbellum globeshards
and splinters

your tongue plunges       ~     to my gristled heart
and reaches                    ~     till you stop my little wounds
and reaches                    ~     till you shod my feet
and reaches                    ~     beyond shiver
                                                                     to silence

observe! my shavings of flesh
and soul healed!
breastfed fields of colostrum bloom

                           each grain safely softstarch
                           beneath glassy         beeswing
                                                            epidermis

             White Tara tau
             eyes opening in the forehead
             &palms&soles

no male % no female
no American % no Other
no ocean
of existence=suffering

   fx       thus we exalt               inter     national
             sprung~joined from quartz tears
             on the faces                of our Gods
             of the Worlds        fx

V.

 


A child says, What is America’s glass?
Fetching it to me with nicked hands,

knowing things speak
if looked through
not shattered >

How could I answer the child?


Bayou Segnette, Louisiana: giant virgin cypress trees killed by petroleum sludge runoff, 1972
Bayou Segnette, Louisiana: giant virgin cypress trees killed by petroleum sludge runoff, 1972.


I do not know what it is
                                     any more than anyone.

                     Those who know, do not say;
                     Those who say, do not know.

When a Black Goddess rises from the bayou—
her marshgrass cornrows
threaded with infant redfish,
gummed with dispersants, tar—

we ask her what it means.
Sighs she, Which of you knoweth the perfume of a magnolia?

We claim that we know.

             She strokes pocked furrows
             Of swamp tupelo bark. Then orders, hissing imperious,
             Put it into words.

             We are silent—————.

And tremble as our canoes
tip, upset by Letiche the Monster, our Tainted Keitre
shouting Who dat say dey gonna beat da Parish?
While shattering glasswater
around the muttering, bobbing dead.

VI.

 


I guess the glass must be all the children
of America         who do not sleep
                                     on cypress moss pallets
                                     to gain strength
                                     from the trees——

I guess it must be Pele’s Hair       volcanic        windspun
           each golden strand     tipped
           with one black tear——

Or Maine’s moon jellyfish        see-through saucers
           dustpink gonads          like four-leaf clovers
           in each buttermilk center——

Or fixed lightning        fulgurite        hollow tubes
           of glass        smooth within     blackrough without
           like Appalachia miners——


   I guess it must be the sand of my disposition,
   out of clear hard grains melted—
                                 on this strange American ground.

I guess it must be Manhattan
Project trinitite——gloss-crackle desert crust
^
the sand drawn up
^
into the mushroom      ing cloud      melted
^
becoming            celadon            rust            and pitch
^
and then rained down——

            Or I guess it is the Cup of the Gods,
            A cloudless goblet deliberately dropped
            Bearing no name so that we may seek

                         Among the sharpness,
                         Bloodflesh and say Whose?——

Or perhaps we will taste it
on the someday
when our armies’

straight, drab uniforms at last
won’t run but cling, untied states
morphing into flexing peignoirs—

lace pulling
across boxy guts,
spaghetti straps gripping

bristle. (A holiness
in satin,
and in love, that craves a give,

a bend.)                                                                      O, how our mouths

will then laugh,
sighing, Come away with us,

newloves. The moon’s a glass
apple—salty
upon our tongues.

               Perchance the glass is the clearbone
               Erase~space of our pointillist flesh—



Eruption of Kilauea volcano, 1969
A rare “dome” or “brain” lava fountain eruption of Kilauea volcano, 1969.
Kilauea means “much spreading.”
The volcano, home to the goddess Pele, has been erupting constantly since 1983.



     Each atom more than a million times
            Smaller than a hair
            And more than 99.9999% void—

Or earth/atmosphere’s finite but clarion water—
Waste product of star
Formation—

            f-1    Or I suppose the glass is itself a grain…
                                                            the produced babe
                     of the cosmos ∂ stars ∂ earth ∂ stones——            f-1

Or I guess it is a uniform rune:
And it means, Ground among gods among birthwardeath
                                                                dunedunghumus,
Silica of boneligamenthairteeth

Transparent, the glass eyes
In our loinsnipplesnavels

Sinless, the bare window
And stainless breath
Innocent, the lens of this formula fed babe—————?

VII.

 


Or not?
Forgive           despite bounty           I am unsatisfied…

fontanel firming,
I    climb    through    sulfurous   clouds   gagging    to    toss    coins/
fish/chickens/vegetables sometimes kukui/plumeria now and then a
goat/tires/scrap metal/Dell  into  Kilauea  crater,  inflationary fingers
thrust from lava in its depths—even tadpoles wriggle up to gasp:

MORE

How many Kentucky mountaintops
to blast?

How many crude-slick terns
to die among the mangroves?

                                               Ach, Neil, our conquest flag is metal >
           so it never waves                    on the windless moon



Grayscale scientific drawing of a nudibranch, a spercies of sea slug
Hopkin’s Rosy Nudibranch, Hopkinsia rosacea MacFarland, 1905, by Anna B. Nash.



to distract, Googolplex Goddess of the Keys
            sleeps spooning          with me
                        all night    ~     all day
in our crystal conch bed           domed palace
                                                of sand dollars and junonia
            trans   lucent semen                milk-tight
            coconut breasts
            no bitbridles to our ecstasy
            the joy of morning       the hue~born nudibranch
                                                between her lips
            She gives   ^   pomegranates   ^   pawpaw
robes of vanilla
                        trained and gentle sea cows pas de deux
                               a choir of upside-down jellyfish
                   the ∞ cornucopia                     of imagined reality

Do you hear
(she asks on the leaving wind)
(her uterine discernment, by necessity,
lightless and deep)
all waters, amniotic, expressing their desire:
            How can we reproduce ourselves?

VIII.

 


             Yes. The open set ~ ring within ring.
             Soft Sheaves Fine Sheaves Flabby Sheaves
             Tao Tau lotus unwinds

So stop now————————————————
             with me and own all that rises

from within and beyond this country,
within and beyond the mind:

             earthairfirewater
             *up*down*bottom*top*strange*charm*

             evermore, the wet~elastic scattering

Matter tends        toward increasing        complexity

Look for me then
not beneath your bootsoles
but on your/their soles ~ in your/their soles
and in the silicon étalé of all flesh



Black and white photograph of a path in a forest
Lovers’ Lane, 2009



and in your soul always alone
always ahead | back turned

looking forward
on the tree-lined lane—

With each thought we make this world…
…like the fired melt~meld…
…of sand+soda ash+lime…

Every bud a small swelling…every root softened
          with hairs…
Every tree, if slashed, growing upward leaving
          the wound…healed…the same distance
          from the ground…
There are no entirely black flowers…only parts…

I have heard the naysayers, the Occams…

              fx       yet we shall multiverse…talk only…
                        of trans-world identity…wavefunction…
                        all that is created and not created…
                        the Ultimate Ensemble         fx

Trespass/Étalé
Past salvation

                        Neither beginnings nor endings nor accidents
                        Ancient parallel to youth
                        Each failure pulls forward the spirit >

          while we, mistaken,
          rub ourselves anxious
          to remove any trace
          of global jam
          and cream—————

          Oh Wrestling Jacob,
          Here comes the dawn!
          I’ve still got you…

I write this to bait                           |    The Founders

                                                       |    The Creators

IX.

 


Black and white photograph of the Rio Grande running through the Elena Canyon
In Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande separates the United States
and Mexico within Santa Elena Canyon’s 1,500 foot high walls.



who made not just the liquid flex,
but also the fissured mica
scattered in this poem—

rock without ripple——

like our penis
of factory citrine nacre
           ascending
our vaginal
           walls
of lazurite
enshrined  |  enstoned           | petrified, the rhetoric
of the States’ United fences:
I own a sky
           in my pocket
I own a sky
           of my loins
I own the sky

atop The MX·TX·AZ·CA Border
           possessing desert
we screw        in the saddle
and sleep        in the canyon——
           C’mon down in our hole we say
           See what you kin see
           Ain’t no one here but us
           You will never leave

a plastic scapular
of the Virgin

melted and baked
into the dead

woman’s breasts…
shoes missing

toe tips black
with bruises

like periods
to end air

heart burst       from cocaine
given                to make her walk

            faster


An old black and white photograph of indistinct machinery with levers and a steering wheel covered in sand
Machinery covered by sand, date unknown.



across Coahuila

fleeing a village
        that had lost
        its men:
        to us———————

At La Linea, The Boundary, Coyote stops Little Red Riding Hood and asks, “Where are you headed? What are you carrying?”

—

“I’m off to my abuela’s house,” says Little Red Riding Hood. “I’m bringing her pico and tortillas.”

—

“You must choose,” says Coyote, pointing to two paths, fenced, of sharpened glass shards:

Needles                or                Pins

—

“Which path do you prefer?” Coyote asks. “The Path of Crystal Needles or the Path of Crystal Pins?”

—

“I’ll take the Path of Crystal Pins,” says the girl.

—

“Well done!” Coyote replies. “I’ll take the Path of Crystal Needles, and we’ll see who gets there first, who

wins                 the agents calling
border crossers Tonks
                         for the sound             of flashlight thuds
                                                           on human skulls.”

900 John Doe grave markers
            like cement bread loaves
astride desert border—

            where, Coyote, the universe
            is accelerating
            unfixed as sand—————————

X.

 



Black and white propaganda poster with two soldiers in overcoats charging with their guns. The poster reads
United States Food Administration poster, ca. 1917-1918.



—better to drift~sift, then, no barriers but breeze

                                 because borderwalls grow

[Iwo Jima: 1945]
lives in Suribachi foxholes,
drama of rust. To move

is a shore, each moment
an engine

of difference. Straddle
trench latrines, whore baths
from water-filled
helmets. Even rocks

charge. Moldy bully beef,
hardtack, and above smoke
slowly weds. When might
checkmate
relax? The colonel

of dusk in his tie
of burnt soldiers,
slipping
astronomies. Now fate
unbuttons as the Night

Police fire, lakes
of summer dying.
Wounds like mud,
we savages

of carbon. If you get a flag
to the top, put it up. I will plant
caramel islands, the teen
marine says—patch
beard aquiver
as blood lungfills
from schrapnel—

and mountains with jelly toast
summits. His childhood
replies: To shake

is mulch smell
and bright leaves
against gusts. Then
the milk foxes

and feathers, this lull
sepulcher
of snow——

[Fallujah: 2004]
woes between
Abu Ghraib

and vibrato. Sand can’t
argue as bombs cleave

the garage! IEDs,
RPGs, white
phosphorus shake
‘n bake. Breath

waits, ever patient
between desert clouds
and all clocks. Thermos
full of hard candy.
On the asphalt,

lanes scatter. To drift,
the major shouts,
is nothing
but fucking.
All cottages—

picket clutched,
roseate—
and then become legend.
Fedayeen

and running from
sullen flack. We swab
our raw crotches
with salicylic acid
because no patrol
reflects. These generals
are lawyers for fungus,

our dead beaten
and then set
ablaze. Even the fabric

of sea elides into wrath,
not float. Hear those
shouts as they burn
within tanks?

Blackened, each body
aswing above
your Euphrates——


 


Listen to parts XI through XVI:

XI.   
XII.  
XIII. 
XIV.  
XV.   
XVI.  


Photo Credits: