SKETCH OF A JOURNEY #7

An uncovering, the vintage idea of apocalypse.
Dovetailed accounts printed
on limestone through modern lithography. The miles

have been miscalculated. (Do you even own
a computer anymore?) A lecture at Yale,

              YEATS’ PHALLOCENTRIC POETRY WAS A MESSAGE TO ALIENS, A MAP TO THE 
                                                          ASHES OF HIS FATHER, and I wonder

if they ever find them. Step in time, step and
              time, what happened
to my left foot? Passed lost mistakes
and on to Alaska, where the fish will gather around us
like smoke.

 

 

 

 

 

REGENERATE AT WILL BUT YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN

Wolves prowl
              around garbage behind
my apartment/ I wrap my ears

in the furs of rabbits. Sometimes 
I dance with the man in the apartment 
above me; he steps back/ the floorboard
overhead creeks/ I step forward.

              Silence follows, and then
a sharp deep push of noise hangs

between us/ we can see each other
across a fence. Is that fire?

No, but smoke. No, but
blood.

A Rothko in the city’s square/Men smear
red paint on their faces. A child sucks on salt licks/
there isn’t anywhere far enough so
we walk everywhere. I bend my neck/ California/ but

Mexico was lost. There is no new/ there is no old;
              once, I was fascinating.

 

 

 

 

 

SKETCH OF A JOURNEY #23

We are where we were, the world circles. 
              I flew to see you on the Fourth of July,

and the Midwest began sending out messages, tap code in the form
           
of fireworks, blurred blues meant keep going, coppers, turn away. 

              I thought the guy next to me said sinister in his sleep but when I turned, he was staring

at the seat in front of him. There was a well with a sheen of oil in the backyard of your home (a
              personal Gulf Coast) and I bet I could

set it on fire if I dared: the smoke from your water would play
              like puppets on a screen:
                                          Here, a shark’s fin
                                          Here a tree
                             A Pollack on sky, clear. Then the day appeared 
and I waited it out on your porch, nothing lit.

At sundown, you were still gone and I was too, a friend told me
                             to find you at sea, where we could break the dark calm.

I spent the night on a rock, searching for fins against the dark.
                             When they found me, I broke out of their circle with a high long whistle.

                             a long high call
                             a long gone thought

            
The first time the last time is the same. A plane appears in a sharp lift neither here nor there.

                             I tried a new depth, where I cannot see easily, but there are no surprises, just more 
mud and gills and I cannot disrupt them. 

A gold chain around my neck choked me, and I swam to shore, ran, a lit match.

I can discover unknown shapes on the coast, create them with the push of body,
a man asks me for the time but I shook my head. Children ask me to play. I forget to eat. 

A form of art that looks like me that looks like art.

 

 

—-

 

 

Suzi F. Garcia is a poet in the MFA program at Notre Dame and the co-editor of the Canarium Books Tumblr. She spends her free time watching K-dramas with her cats and boyfriend. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Word Riot, Heavy Feather Review, and The Dirty Napkin.