anna rabinowitz
from WORDS ON THE STREET
BABY
Vanished as if she had somewhere
to go and had to arrive without delay
How sudden her flight, how lithe her legs
winging arms, swift of flex
Nowhere was dying
to greet her
She made her getaway with ease
weightless dancergrace
from place to space
Birds, kites, flying fans
could speed no better
But we slept—
that was the rub…
Baby called our bluff
NO –
Luxuria snatched her loathsome lust left us bereft
We ‘ll never know why
No worse, there is none no worst, there is none
We keened by her side
WHY WHY
we’d never know why
wailed wheeled in wildest woe
~~~
April is the lustfullest month tulip month
she loves me, she loves me not
MONTH OF GRIEF
fickle handmaid to seed
defies its promise toys with us
denies hereafter
defames our weather
Beware loss by stealth
Beware blanketing rain
SUPERBIA TAKES A TURN
Superbia bursts into the room,
high-arched feet,
52 bones and 66 joints,
perfectly pampered in pearly hose,
staggers on eight-inch sequined heels.
Steep insteps remind the flex of her back
breaking at the wheel.
Brash-lipped lover of her own excellence,
Oh, those thrice-layered laced lashes (through which she barely sees).
She believes in pleasure and herself.
She dreams of climbing blustery heights.
Superbia, Queen of Queens,
dreams
of shoes on her feet,
of cozy
toes
in fondling shoes
of how she can’t slip
the same shoe
on every foot,
but when the shoe cuddles she nuzzles up
She dreams of pride of possession,
of 2,700 pairs of shoes
in one woman’s closet,
of feats of collection
and 6 million pairs in god’s vitrine
and one pair of lucky baby shoes
dangling from the rear-view mirror
now berthed in the too-soon grave
She has travelled a great distance to trace the baby.
She sheds her shoes.
WRATH AND ROLL
My soul is not itself,
A loud jargogle invades the plague of contingency.
Of course, I often deliciate in a state of confusion,
Especially when I wildly corrade detritus with illusion.
Many collages create mayhem, but these days folks
Giggle and kench, hosting bitter tears in their eyes.
No one seeks the mockery or scorn of ludibrious games.
Our ailing world is dedicated to erase sanguinolency.
Hence the decline of bloodshed in our current wars.
Drones, our best to date grade A, silent, unmanned aer-
Ial vehicles, our sleek UAVs, aces of launch and leave,
Save lives. SAVE LIVES. Hip, hip, hooray, yippee!?
Remote control: surf the Web, site define
In its prime: eye on the screen, eye in the sky.
Get it down cold in comfy seats at safe old Creech.
Skill the scan, learn the drill and clinch their cease.
The shift is done, a setting sun, and home
To ground round patties on the grill, a jog with the dog,
A kiss for kids, drowsy, and wiped, hitting the sheets,
Plus shades down for a fuck, a hug, and a good night’s sleep.
We’ve navigated a boundless longinquity.
Life is luculent.
War is kind.
EPISTLE TO THE OMNIVORES
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
...O belly, O stinking bag filed with dung and corruption. At either end of thee, foul is the
sound...
Spawner of Sin
Gula, voluminous voluptuary, never gets her fill
Too soon, too delicately, too expensively, too greedily,
TOO MUCH
Spawner of Pride
Haggler, tippler, intriguer of feast
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
Be not among winebibbers: among riotous eaters of flesh. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Spawner of Sloth
Gula, worn by hungers
Fullness of bread neither sates
nor placates
nor abates
Food and drink, with thee she schemes to live
Crapulous and unfulfilled
Discharge, phlegm, mucus running from the nose, hiccups, vomiting and violent
belching...The increase in luxury is nothing but the increase in excrement.
Spawner of Greed
And like a Crane his necke was long and fine,
With which he swallowed up excessive feast.
Spawner of Lust
Flesh made safe
Death tied to the stake
Gula plays hostess at tables laden to groan
SO, WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
GREETINGS! WELCOME! TAKE A SEAT!
Omnivores
THIS LETTER TO YOU!
Break bread with malignant maggots
gnats and flies
Beef gleams in the feast’s corpulent dusk
trout bathe in béchamel
succulent hens bask in béarnaise
pots de crème triple crème crčme Anglaise
legs of lamb adorned with mint rosettes
pork roasts recline on polenta cakes
crustaceans wade in bouillabaisse
stuffed tongues boned hams breasts of veal
tureens of consommé bordeaux and beaujolais sausage ropes coiled
like salacious snakes
Omnivores
THIS FEAST IS YOURS
SAY GRACE
from PRESENT TENSE
ECOSYSTEM
1
That somber greens — ferns, conifers, cycads — flittered
with fruit and bloom
That the earth’s face pinked, reddened, honeycombed glow
That angiosperm came to outnumber gymnosperm
That they seduced insect, bat and bird, flaunting colors
and smelling good
That they multiplied, hybridized, colonized east to far,
north to near, valley to peak
2
That brush crowded out burr oak and big bluestem grass
That weed evicted sweet brown-eyed Susan
That buckthorn unseated cream gentian and violet bush clover
3
That there had been prairie-fringed orchid, Indian grass,
large-leafed aster
That there had grown starry campion and bottlebrush buckeye
That there had flown great spangled fritillaries, Edwards’ Hairstreaks
That Cooper’s hawks, eastern bluebirds, Appalachian browns
had manned the trees
4
That what was mis-taken reappeared
That flowers strummed in the trees
5
That they made it and made it, new, now, and again
That it is possible, possible, spreading, and so
NOSTALGIA IS A LOADED GUN
We’ve traded the hiss, the fuzz and the fizz of the fair for
elsewhere, a landmark in the riddled dark of “why is a raven
like a writing desk?”
We laugh when we can no longer cry and last laughs brood
longest.
Sunrise entreats us with Goya disasters of war, Munch
forests, and Warhol electric chairs.
Pre-emptive fictions and futile plots unmask reality as a
triumph of open wounds.
David Lynch once said, “images are no longer beautiful, but
chains are.”
Oil fields and T-shirts are now extinct. Fourteen-foot fences
fail to enclose dissolute goals and murderous needs.
As for abstract marks or loving gestures, those strokes no
longer seize the eye.
To fabricate is to make and to fake.
Lies are the intensest truths.
Oh, how we miss fertilized hair and lacquered toenail
clippings shaped into red- ripe cherries.
Who can take pride in bottling the sweat of beleaguered
brows for sale to the highest bidder?
If only we could costume memories. But our headmasters
refuse to learn from old clothes.
If only we could find radiance in the forlorn.
I have always been a dreamer.
from THE WANTON SUBLIME
OF PLUNDER AND PRECINCT
It begins in a far meadow, a bright room, a hillside thick with time
A woman in a field of flowers interrupted and carried away
A thick of meadow begins it in a woman bright with flowers and time
A room carried in a hillside interrupted a far field away
Had she kept a place in her mind empty to welcome a guest?
And so she played and plucked— lilies from silence
And so she in her mind kept a guest to welcome lilies and
A place empty she had played and plucked silence from
It is a lie that serves the truth
Beauty by nature rules over strength
The truth that serves beauty is a lie
Nature by its strength overrules
A thick silence interrupted in a field of time—a hillside bright with it
Flowers in the mind—in a meadow a room
Is plucked and carried empty to welcome a lie. Her guest
Rules over strength and beauty. And so kept by nature
She had played Woman. It begins far away. She a truth
from a place that serves lilies.
EXCERPT
Unarmed, unwarned
must she yield—
must she stop—
a gasp alas
aghast perhaps
expecting this—
(whose greeting sneaks
into her peace?)
at this moment
sundering syllables right
from his heart
Hail thou that art highly favored
just like that he arrives—
enters—
in to her —
unto her — in
barges in
just like that
comes in and then—
and now—
how can she duck
out of this—
alone— afraid—
poor duck
out of water
not yet known by man
forced here to stop—
(squalls in her breast
sudden twitches in
her groin—)
(shall she bend to smell the lily—
or sneak
another peek at her book—?)
IF I AM FAVORED
LET ME FINISH THIS BOOK—
(or bolt right
out of this place—
or look him right
in the eye)
Listen, you uninvited duck
winging in this way—
if I am favored
leave me be
—I’ve got things to do around the house
let’s put a stop
to this plot
sweat beads in her crotch
sneaks
down her thighs—
why me— why me what’s in
this for me—
(elsewhere nails drive in—)
(coo to her do to her do with her—)
do by her—
right
by her—
do not toy with her—
(must he sneak
in on her between breakfast and lunch—)
poor duck
plucked from—
sucked from—
(what dreams hammer to a stop—?)
it is with great pleasure I tell thee thou art favored
(the looked-up-to turns away—)
favored, favored
for what—
(wanting to flee but leaning in—)
Mary Mary
not contrary
at Gethsemane your garden stops—
with cocky swells and modest belles—
what a fine crop—
right
green are the grasses of grief—
out in the yard a red-billed duck
takes off for the lake—
as in there was an opening down the road—
a sneak
preview of the way which is not home
that sneaks
into the scene
out of the distance—
terrain favored
with going on—
because of must
because of be
because nobody ducks
out of this Baby—
Mary it’s your chance to step in—
for the good of—
the need of—
(might even be fun—— right—?)
favored
chosen
oh finest fruit at full STOP
in the enactment STOP
this unraveling STOP
as it sneaks STOP in
through your favorite door STOP
raining harder now STOP so duck right
down STOP (or out) STOP
duck if you can STOP but you can’t STOP
now he’s come
STOP
THE WOVEN CHILD
I
And what if a soul
fall into a body…
And if it gaze into pure light…
And if something grow into life…
As the spider spins its web
she spins him of herself,
AND LEAVES A MEMORY
life-bestower, nurturer,
agent of futurity
oh, woven child
you must not unravel
she webs and warps with finest, strongest yarn
II
Listen:
Thou shalt never forget thy mother and what she has done for thee…For she carried thee long beneath her heart as a heavy burden, and after thy months were accomplished she bore thee.
Three long years she carried thee upon her shoulder and gave thee her breast to thy mouth, and as thy size increased her heart never once allowed her to say,
“Why should I do this?”
She is and remains a mother
even though her child die,
though all her children die.
For at one time she carried you under her heart.
And you do not go out of her heart ever again.
ALL THIS NO MAN KNOWS.
A SMALL ANATOMY OF FEELING
That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound
Rebounding,
rounding the fecund earth
Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
is a mighty absence to understand
(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)
Dun is the color of submission
Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface—
Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple—
Apple of the eye, amour of town and street, apple of the cheek
Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year
Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next
Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone
Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye
Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome—
Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning
Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside
from DARKLING
EXCERPT
Inside: a story —
inventories, incidents —
pleading to be flossed
from the teeth of silence —
Leaching congealed vowels
lately of / longing for / words —
Explanations not yet factored into claim: —
this is this —
that is that —
As in first annunciations/ as in debuts
for old roles /
as if to atone:
yes, I love you —
Namers courting drifting sands,
fated to root heels,
Toes into dunes rampant with consonants of
Unreachable destinies,
lonely nouns of hearts
Pilgriming to wished-for places
on the verbs
Of desire —
destinations where nothing feels
New but an aching need to shout out.
Again and again the narrative howls for words.
Circling, leaping into
/ out of / shade, but it makes
Only wrong turns —
how can it say the right thing? — shall it
Pledge never to do that again,
to be good next time?
— a daughter
Parents —
blooms at the edge of a small scream —
In the beginning is the end — words and more buds —
fingers knotted / throats
Choked —
syllables scuffling for a spot / patient for a time
Entropies, upstretched vacancies,
delays
Grazing sound —
too soon for /
in the aftermath of / being —
Amok with what is unseen / unsaid: love me,
Touch me, make use of me —
preludes
as in dawnings,
distances
as in prayers
Ensnared at the main gate —
and now —
and now—
oh god —
they’re dead.
GLOSSARYblack holes / white holes / wormholes / origin and fate — they’ll last me a lifetime sans regret:what I know I cannot know, I need not forget. prior translations sprout on scattered tongues; hear me’s moss in bloodless mouths: what theydidn’t want to remember, I’m unable to forget. root of all roots: cause of all causes: unreadable, unknowable, except to itself: speaker in numbers:what I cannot know, I must not forget. an infant universe of ten dimensions once ripped apart: remaindered: reality: three dimensions plus time:a man, a woman, dimensionless, crossed the sea to forget. they include time yet they are timeless: they contain the world, but the world would not contain them;what I’ve come to note, I must not forget. the world is names, the names numbers: Isaac the Blind, unfettered by terrestrial eyes, saw ten digits without end:how do I quote names I can neither recall nor forget? chapters locked in time: shredded Torah scrolls, sacks of flour poured on the road, posterities of pineflamed to ash: I’ve come to know; I must not forget. what is admissible: her knee nudging the sewing machine lever, his gun-shot leg:that which must be scavenged, because we forget. arms assembling / reassembling: number my stars: number my grass: number my blood: earthdeafened by ciphers indecipherably quiet. the narrative reveals hints of what it was / is / should / could have been: their sisters and brothers readhaven anywhere: even remote islands chose to defect. black holes roam enfoldments deeper than fears trapped in their eyes: never-to-be-knownscenarios sentenced to decomposed alphabets. I am trying to get to the bottom of things; I am trying to open the folds, to unroll the bolts;I am trying not to forget. this meal with the foretaste and aftertaste of not knowing: these entrees sauteed in unbutteredsounds: this meat-starved, chipped-plate banquet. Safed: in the presence of absence, saying little, intending much, Isaac ben Solomon Luria spoke to the speechlessbirds: black are the holes’ cavities, awesome the glister of jet! we die into life; we live into death; printouts torn and seamed, ravelled and patched:nothing is chaste. hollow bowls (graves) of when beneath crazed plates (fields) of where beside empty cups (houses) of why :their tables were set. they wrote letters begging to be read, and got no reply; pried open windows of windowless rooms, rubbed outtheir eyes with failures of light; swallowed gruel and grit. why did you forsake them: why did you retreat from your witness sky, your righteous world unbuilt?:must their candles perish because they’re unlit? theirs is not stillness unnoised; theirs is silence exiled from sounds of uncountable generations: theirs is languagewith the grammar beaten out of it. because they inhaled the air, because they exhaled the air, because they occupied space, slept and ate and walkedstreets, because their eyes were green, blue, sometimes violet... see to it that nothing is lost or forgotten...record...and collect! but their history was ending, their families erased:they sealed their lips and left me to imagine what to forget. let the poverty of my words not be abject; let them persist in making and remaking, shaping, reshaping:to name, rename, unname: not to forget. for a world never to be repeated, only to be archived: trying-to-enter-the-thing, trying-to-name-the-loss words;survival not as a desire, but as a duty to celebrate. a community in the van of the East...a land set for a halting- place of enmities, a neutral ground...wilderness becomea pool of water and the land no longer termed desolate. they didn’t believe in God; nor that they were chosen as models for the gentiles; they understood suffering,otherness: tattered clothes: how well they came to fit. why? was it because their language was never spoken by anyone with power, the only tongue withouta vocabulary for war: merely howls and ash to record it? when you have a great and difficult task...if you only work a little at a time...without faith and without hope, suddenlythe work will finish itself. But will it be free and I free of it? singing your song without singing your song: dashes, dots, commas, deflected threads splicing air:to disclose what it would impoverish me to forget. what I know is what I need to unknow and reknow: a sea of syllables frightening to swim,bent on utterance before I forget.Thesis: Hypothesis: Ein Sof: A priori: Note bene: Cosmology: Insight: Empirical: Numerology: Themes: Premise: Understand: Leitmotifs: Sixth sense: Ergo: Ontology: Furthermore: Gnostic moan: Epistemology: Rationale: Mandate: Affirmation: Nomenclature: Destiny: Belief: Inquiry: Rebuttal: Tautology: Hypothesiscum plea:
EXCERPT
So little cause, and illusions of meaning withdraw.
O little cause of timetorn torntime motes in time,
Little can they know trapped in that time,
In that abyss of history when wordclaws
Tear at their throats, when an alphabet — hell-sent
To taverns of steaming samovars, hell bound —
Lies in wait, not knowing when, how, why peril may sound —
Elbows into the marketplace, jostles the remnant
Crowds — Moishe the Barber, resident now of silence,
Apostle of naked chins, shaves the peasant faces,
Unbeards the Jews who have strayed —
Simon the Merchant mans three carts at once —
Edifice of fur hat, hill of velvet frock, pyramid of boot,
and in New York “Little
Flower” reads the comics, swings a baton at Carnegie Hall,
On his motorcycle rushes as if tomorrow can be stalled,
Rushes in his sidecar to the latest fire, has faith that evil,
Culpabilities are temporary alliances with darkness,
Antipathies slated to be erased from the moral terrain,
Rounds the corner on the glittering, unstoppable wheels of better days
On a roll, on the march, speeding through expectant, hope-doused streets —
Little causes: skullcaps, sideburns, leaning cottages on chicken legs —
If we forget— lest we forget— O scattered sheep exiled to lost roads,
Nuggets of piety cling to their coats, on their brows they glow — O
Guardian light — on the floor a child writhes, the rebbe's in the stove —
Slumber, landsleit doze — long live this drone,
this winterdark of dregs...
from AT THE SITE OF INSIDE OUT
ALL ABOARD GOING ABOARD
Of all colors the dense lore of them the black border
hounds the white page o the demands on order
one two three hide in order four five six seek land
where the hill breaks where the shore cubes the borderland
where looted harbors where long ago dolors of gold ore
refused to melt ingot upon ingot loaded full on board
how shall I bore into this who has bored
out of this please give up your cool from where border
patrol forces have sped I will not ignore clamors of language or
disguise myself o the hooded roaming in short order
the order to flee the ports jammed where the borderlands
why these doors where the subject/subjects where land-
ing holds its breath on the spot it is inscribed we all land
together we’re in it together o the fictions stored on board
“to think is to fail” “in it together” they sing no idea borderlands
o resonant lanes o corded woods the weird boarders
whose untold parties discarded rooms numbing disorder
out of which due to which on stage we must reor-
der out of frayed shawls erased disclosures and/or
filthy fingernails the palm roars in the mind aborted land-
ings where folklore shrieked to a halt where the new order
silenced metaphor where original lacunae climbed on board
where the temporary name themselves where the border
takes its memory where its pulse cannot be found borderlands
what will it take the opaque brittles the night-baked borderland
where candors sprout from rocks where characters cannot oar
out of estrangements the darkling of that will you get bored or
angry being neither here nor there to have clawed to land
where fish are fowl where it is not manageable to be on board
hating the mirror and inking your face out of photos in order
to tell less than you know where there is too much to order
where seams gape and hems weep where sleeves moan borderlands
where space is mute where the volume is low where board-
ed-up orifices mourn walls of ships of state unmoored of rumor
of absence of digging of plowing of people of no-one’s land
of the tyranny of denial of the monarchy of doubt of the border
hoarding more borders the record defiant with emptiness of the order
to land before the final history once and for all to the borderland
quick to the core where first traces storm all aboard going aboard
SAPPHO COMMENTS ON AN EXHIBITION
OF EXPRESSIONIST LANDSCAPES
Then, she says, a penis is needed, female
artists almost always can use one, taking
charge with tools like brushes and palette knives to
build up their pictures,
bold as men are, spraying great skeins of yellow,
cobalt blue, and crimson across the canvas,
rage or quiet made at their will, exploding
measures of failure,
risking planes, dissolving full spaces, Bluemner
hurling turquoise clouds on a purple field as
blackbirds wheel in formation, Hartley sculpting
skies out of granite,
oil as cloud made palpable, air as breathless
form accreting mass in its own defense while
ends begin and boundaries disappear.
This is how men die.
Now, she says, O'Keeffe is my point, consigned to
desiccated bones smoother than silk, unblemished
petals, lilies swollen in heat, faint tensions
vectored through tunnels,
warm vaginas, moisture of vulvas, furtive
stand-ins, meanings plain as your face: a woman
minus penis making art with her body,
trapped in her body.
THE FOREPLAY OF HERMENEUTICS
1.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation —
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation —
her throat slit by the hyphenated run.
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation —
her throat slit by the hyphenated run
impossible to subdue once begun
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
2.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face,
severed between points, dismantled, erased.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face
severed between points, dismantled, erased,
flesh bone dry or cloyingly moist, whatever the case.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
3.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things to say,
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things to say
about hermeneutics parsed in foreplay
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things to say
about hermeneutics parsed in foreplay,
language dandling codes fervently relayed,
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
4.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Fondle nails, ears, sweaty feet, punctuate each caress.
Eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Fondle nails, ears, sweaty feet, punctuate each caress.
Lick the bottom of the bowl, sweet eye. Yes, oh yes,
eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
AN UNBODIED JOY WHOSE RACE HAS JUST BEGUN
1.
Then I will deliberate with the bones of earliest memory
And I will revoke fields of sown obligation
I will demand a site-specific locale for the face en face
And I will disarm dialogue with splintered phrase
And I will needle zeitgeist with parody
And I will backdate the check I’m to sign in the morning
And in the evening I will revise the beginning because its end is everywhere
Yes, I will plunder residues to state my case plainly
But I will be ambiguous as the distant horn of the barreling car
So, where will you find me, where will you find me
2.
Yes, I will fly solo to the bones of earliest memory
And I will stow seed revoked from fields sown with obligation
And I will invent cosmic order for the face en face
And I will arm concept with splintered phrase
Yes, I will needle agenda with parody
And I will decode the check I’m to sign in the morning
And in the evening I will emulsify the beginning because the end is everywhere
Then I will plunder dream to state my case plainly
And I will be distant as the horn of the barreling car
So, how will you find me, how will you find me
3.
Yes, I will fly solo to deliberate with the bones of earliest memory
And I will run rife with seed revoked from fields of sown obligation
And I will make actual a site-specific, cosmic order for the face en face
And I will disarm concept with the dialogue of splintered phrase
Yes, I will needle agenda with the zeitgeist of parody
Then I will backdate the recurrent code of the vintage check I’m to sign in the
morning
And in the evening I will revise the emulsified beginning beginning to end
And I will plunder dreamy residues to state my case plainly
And I will be beholder beheld, ambiguous as the strident warning of the distant
horn of the barreling car
Try to find me, try to find me, try to find me
