W. B. Keckler
Bone Species
Trace a without. Approach the cloud-cringe of angels,
muddy the worlds.
Do we really want to be as awake as that? Isn’t that
what fills the hospitals?
Here is the page of Old English I was picking,
iron locks under snow.
Soon, dawn will snap out birds from eaves of these iced buildings,
the form I seek will be submerged, perhaps a mercy.
Here, look at this box of dominoes from China
made from the bones of dogs,
(I arrange them as I wait).
Yellowed teeth, a century’s nicotine and tea.
Patinated by the clever animal who learns
nature loves her caesuras.
So this page is yours, though you do not enter;
no game materializes
on the immemorial table,
only the pleasure of touching cold bone. Feeling dawn slide overhead,
heben til hrofe,
heaven to roof us,
as I journey backwards,
chase you
until you are these tesserae…
*
I learn
an alien language that can restore you,
shore our pagan place of old,
kennings,
keenings,
these isig-feora,
“icy-feathered ones”
It’s a sleepless language, hissing
insomniac
shore
where you are reborn
in consonantal violence, as
sea-spray to osprey, is
desire
to
Love
(even slain
claws that snarl
water, snare
live-eyed-coinage
writhing memory
as cold Saxons knew
(even slain
Love hunts
O most mutable
and mutagenic
For Possum Tjapaltjarri
It’s not polite to drive into people,
slow or fast.
Are you afraid our stories
will tarnish you?
Conscious stripes.
Conscious dots.
Do do do do dot it.
Blue waterhole at dusk.
A little mortuary painting in a small gem
has a tiny river, a chapel.
Darkening and birds are running
away, into night.
Moon copper red pigment
shines over bones elongating
in quick flight.
The edge is often traveled.
Waves stoke our hunger.
Blue waterhole at dusk.
A little mercury painting in a small gem
has a tiny river, a chapel.
Mnemonic mountains of me collapse.
I hope you can watch.
W.B. Keckler’s Sanskrit of the Body won in the National Poetry Series 2002 and will be published by Viking-Penguin (May 2003). He is also a playwright who often writes in the Grand Guignol tradition. A recent issue of A.bacus was dedicated to his poetry, and work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The Hat, Ur*Vox, Fence, Yefief and many other journals. He is always happy to hear from other poets, writers and numinous beings.