Joseph Kolb
FIVE POEMS
Come, come look closely.
See that line below the lip,
where the skin folds quickly
into the chin?
That’s the last Heraclitan ash,
doused by every goddamn
dualist and dialectician since
Homer withdrew the knife
from the blind Queen’s abdomen.
You see, it was she—
and that’s the feeling you get,
left in the lurch, I mean
church, what the water’s for
when the demigod pours you
his last drink.
I’d wanted one photon
next to a clock.
(Desire.
* *
Warning:
check yr prosody
the way we measure
dagger,
Tyger.
* *
We do not have to cover the machine (nor the hand), here. The rain lands
upon it; requires a tarpaulin to be stretched over it by hand, with
help of others’ hands, as cover (because we assume the machine
is made at least in part of metal). Here then, is a rhetoric of pitiful
loathing (the “we”), or an ignorance of basic chemistry—that
of iron & water. Never mind the chickens we have forgotten. They
will “cluck” or “walk” or be eaten.
* *
The machine “has” a wheel, or it is my flesh.
* *