CHEERS FROM THE WASTELAND
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from The Line

"The town, therefore, was garlanded with green trees, bright blossoms, delicious fruits and trailing vines  . . ."
 


1.
 
morning draws it from bed in socks in soft pencil & squinting out

i know to the west of here is sea


2.
 
i dream girl-moth and embryo whale . how come how pretty : these tiny highways

inside-page the shovel makes . i trothed to : spit a seed and it grows


3.

this morning each bird's name tags behind it or hops when it hops

train whistle blowing : bandit juncos i'm stuck in fullsome prison


4.

the line pulls . blocky seams stack neat . sectioned torso of the tree i knew

robin's egg came into my hands without my willing : birthday 1988


5. 

grey silk dress of uncertainty and i can't hem it

i find a feather-lipped nest on the west house wall : birthday 2010


6.

on foot the slicky travellers cross the field both ways

behind Willow behind Pine behind Dry Creek shopping cart bramble : green sword of guadalupe


7.

uriel's sword of green vines behind cathy becker's house

the river was somehow downtown filled with convicts mother-of-god trash


8. 

some substratum of despair aquarium vitae . aquarium : i must have breathe : ad fontes

a point is that which has no part . a line is a breadthless length


9.

i petalled into bed bud did not become : a boy : a wind : everything

the line is even and odd


10.

how everything tasted . boundless equation skips . and add and add and add

concrete : tree bark : scab : skin


11.

a thingly quiet : some telling : all breathing : high above

the block hazed violet . i lined sprinker cantations : myself


12.

sycamore i thinskinned sycamore i . a spell for not harming . each

small palm in mine : woodpecker junco sparrow starling robin chickadee


13.

stranger hills are nothing a blue absence

Umunhum was watchful : my father-terror . the boys said they came upon the body


14.

the old lady's roses . i wanted to inside-name them : cynthia . agnes

beneath the peach tree the book depository . all winter i never knew : green pages fan untended

. . .

Picture
CAROLINE KNAPP is the author of Facture (2015), The Hunters Enter the Wood (2017), and Tanzsprachen (2017), all chapbooks in the Little Red Leaves Textile Series. Her poems have appeared in Jubilat, CutBank, Verse Daily, KelseySt.com, and Opon.  She left San Jose at eighteen and lives in Oakland.
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