Jane Lewty

looking forward:

to that future opaque slip

skim-over kind of feeling

an implication that down  ¾ down below

[askance looking from a height]

something was once a habit ¾ inhabited as

a region tended, fought over

turned over in mornings of habitual body and understory ¾

there really

was little else

*

a sense of cellular wait, wishing

to move but fixed instead

on cross ¾

section, thoroughfare of sky

section, the swoosh of vehicles

look, the place is now seen from

afar, from a distance, it is so so perspectived

behind pretty red flowers

morphing their way up

give me back

out of largesse [in my future, I]

I ¾ I bend

to take a photograph, at

a old tiny 4pm self, standing way

in shadow for it was

too hot

what did that half-decade do to you?

*

& what are the mutinous dead saying ¾ double-check

if you want ¾ they also at some point

believed ‘more’ was a grasp away or

at least an affirmation

in triptych

of various upheld spirits, the force, the power ¾

the everyday open-eyed yearn that means

you matter ¾ that the ceaseless pull of ‘you matter’

means you do ¾ perhaps remember how cold, how

profound is the path of accident ¾ small paper pieces

alighting wherever, on gravel, on carpet

often without sound

*

of course, no sound ¾ how could you

hear such

moribund / pedestrian / uniform

unthought

after-effected / conditionalized thing

not-astute / an anti-

plan / a short-plan / termed-less

lingered / a glitch / more-or

still going / insighted / unseen

some-felt /not heard / un-dated

pedestrian / felt &

known / accidental / still-going / & moribund

referred-to / after-effected / a condition of

the un-astute / thought how?

*

instead  ¾ the light rail, its

cactus judder sound, the nah nah vehicle hoot of backing-up ¾

tiny rustles of body, the new manicure traced

the sudden beady light of devices ¾

         un-cared-for excerpts of street, of structure

                       of monument tinting ¾ pale pink, pale orange

a paisley-pattern of outside sweeping its way

there’s a garden somewhere in this city ¾ every morning I

am not allowed into it

*

look, would you?

huge cell cylinder about to ¾

and this glossary, this glossary

its circles overlapping       

I refuse not to believe

that everything I did was

needless, or was arc-ed in transit, overhead beyond me

[so many iotas

of I wish would, moments to change] false starts

that were really ends, the forensic

look at so many no’s

addendum, biblio, coda, p.s.

*

e.g.: from a train window                   visaged a sign

on-side like graffiti-ish, exactly written as this title

on a getaway weekend

implacable old massive

slab of tenement imposition, imposing

in a way aching one day I will live

in something like that ¾ home, though

a gravelly place, street-level, little

and all around in-sight & night

the buildings rose in purple & yellow, red & text

& cartoon          buildings hammered slashed up by

wire, the foothills of a wall ¾ often

I think to that sleet of

eye, sleighing past, the word, that

divided, punkt-ed word ¾ I imagine there are many

of you beneath the tracks, the concreted

slab of land under

*

looking back:

bought a sago palm, set it in the window

fed myself, got through a Tuesday, then another day shudder

in feelings of disorder, corrupt in limb and organ of sorts

an odd phrase comes to mind: night boats of dissent

old ropes fraying, spray of

evening settling on the warp

*

in these terrible survival guides, we’re told

to stay the river, to sit gently in one spot, to

versify most days, etcetera, not to forget

the plastic piggies of our

selves, saying [to the self] be kind to another self, or ¾

*

I am late to all that

almanacs seem as no index of anything

despite to me, they’re everywhere

what are you up to? what is next?

new moons toll month after month

& choiring my inbox, that great sound ¾ affirm!

I’m thinking that

the world can no longer be forded

and it is better to slide, ill-fitting, out ¾

a draft of yourself, a shimmer

       against such a place, where

turned-out membranes are shaken to the sky

and a man says look, look: not to you a body but to me it is.