Mark Lamoureux

Sadal Melik

  Jumbo shrimp boat plasticine:
                  festive camphor votive

  denies egress to the ibis.

  A rasp dolled-up
             for surgery

  in fields of
         muesli chai macchiato,

            Joe DiMaggio falun gong
            sex martini lexicons &
gumbo ashtanga
utility bombs.

Ikea muzzle
            for the afterlife.

            Astarte wed to
                                 Ralphie Wiggum:
 
somewhere in the midlands
             a cootiecatcher
ate the world.

 

Altair

Four miles
       over the basilica

note how she
     traverses
       the isthmuses

A longing
     to be smudged

Distance pills
       & bloodless
           resolution

Since there are monsters
       you should prolly
          give the monsters
             names

 

Arcturus

Hammer air
   diluted placid
      forget-me-not
         lure

Tepid blaspheme
     to spell
       better fiends
          burrow
             into largesse

Hop the train
          entrails
            entreatied
        to far off
           black spark

wrestling with encryption
          there's never any
             end to
                the night

 

Algedi

Blueshifted eggshell
of dawn sky

revisited something new as
wet hair.

Water is my eye,
long-forgotten cursive

eschews tired &
true words;

reckoning halo
marks a godhead

interstice, the waking
suture, produce

woven to the solstice
mane, the

rings of Saturn a
voided receipt

for anything now
tested by hubristic

fallow ghosthead:
tropical climes,

Tropicana garden
gnome, home,

Little One, where
traffic goes.

 

Tchou

Attenuated wobbles into autumn:

               I did once love
               the winter stars,

a woman in an
exoskeleton, mundane

events aboard spacecraft,

               this equation into
               which Go figures
               more readily than chess

whom the early surrealists loved.

One body among all bodies
               sweats, breathes

as though high places did
               not birth conifers;

the forgotten tend toward
               pristine expression—

bring this news to Genghis:
               the masses

are sick of all the birds.

 

Regor

As though the ionosphere were that wall,
                                                       Troy,
you once blasted humans from.
Hermes’ red stone breached
said sphere to drift there
with the world’s blue eye gazing

& the men’s eyes staring down on that
churning world; what, up there,
could have saved the others
when your name caught fire in the scaffolding?

               Ants in your little vault
              floating in the fabric
              of that void. Safe from the fray,
              some would say, free. To kiss
              Luna’s face, engines
              of hubris propelled us
              perhaps to make this, too,
              a sphere of wars.

Sky of no birds or
light but your glow,
your heat gone, but your face,
inevitable. Far from
the round walls of home,
wanderers come,
there in the margins.

Addenda. The stars
their numbers increased
but the same old gods waiting.
Those fliers, too, still
go down to the sea at last.

 

Dubhe

Erato tangled in a mop
of kelp, all verdant things

desiccated by the yellow eye
of my rage: I am my mother’s

arms when I hold my mace.
Portents, the things you will see

through each of my 7 flames, Jean
Genie of the opened gate,

limbs of anesthesia & stagnant black
bile: how to say this, again,

automatically? This is a story
about a can & a machete,

or was it an organ grinder? Are you
going to eat that? I wouldn’t

eat that for all the cantaloupe
in Brigadoon. I’m headlit so you

please explain what it is that’s pulling
my leg, an offhand remark

is a burning spear. (Something
here about writing poems.) Or else

nostalgia’s not class
warfare:

A white dwarf & a brown dwarf
& a very large budget. I know

where to fly my pink fuselage,
I gots a necklace

of heads in a courier bag.
Scrabble, fucking & other ignoble

pursuits. Why can’t I be
a skywriter? Because

these words
won’t go away. Comrade,

I’ll build you a kiosk, but don’t
look back because it’s made of apostrophes & spit.

---

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