Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us Read online

and we slit its belly down with a plastic camping knife.

  Feathers settled like tickertape all over the dry yellow lawn

  and we threw its head to eddy slowly in the sinking street,

  dissolving into soft bubbles like magic eight-ball fortunes,

  like tarnished BBs stuck through old reflections in the road.

  All we found in that pigeon was navy blue aquarium gravel,

  two folded magic cards, and a little spool of copper wire.

  ...in the stain of moonlight on the old patchwork quilt that hung over the hearth, the words shaped the profile of a vast head wearing a face on each side. The ivies clinging about the window frame rustled in the wind and their shadows sawed on the patchwork, and one face seemed creased with bitter anger while the other held a saintly vacuity. The wind fingered the dead ashes in the hearth and the monsters’ play of shapes moved to the charcoal fragments there, so that as the ashes flicked both faces seemed to exhale the shadows of leaves all about the room, tumbling against the walls until they reached the parlour door and dissolved there burning...

  THE OTHER EDGE

  Goro Nyudo Masamune folded the law of Heaven

  ninety-nine times in each blue sword he forged

  so that each steel’s quenching trapped ferrite grains

  like dark and spattered constellations praising nothing

  and hanging hungerless as any star.

  As to the red swords of Senzou Muramasa

  that would abide no sheathing unblooded

  their grain had exactly the striation of muscle.

  Now a traveller from the south provoked Muramasa

  by esteeming the edges of priest Masamune’s blades

  renowned for splitting violent throats yet skimming

  like dandelion-down over the skin of the desireless.

  Leaving his forge in the care of a mute apprentice

  a tethered crow and a clay image of buddha Monju

  Senzou Muramasa rode three nights hard south

  with a red katana riding steady at his hip.

  Within the scabbard pouch its red ceramic whetstone

  cracked with no keening laughter under Heaven’s vault

  and the hilt of ceramic did not spin and never sweated

  nor dreamed blood for Heaven’s laws prohibit aberration

  but no more than planed granite admits mercury

  could that katana ever have a name.

  When the smith Muramasa flung down his spent map

  before a quiet riverside and ramshackle shrine

  the blade at his belt split its bullhide sheath apart

  and he smiled that the sight gave him no wonder

  then cried the name of Goro Nyudo Masamune

  who rose smiling from his nap beneath a maple-tree.

  At once Muramasa waded the river’s slow shallows

  to stand his sword’s hilt between river-stones

  where in the clear water each turning maple-leaf

  only whispered like ash upon meeting the blade.

  Each leaf came apart one hundred feet downstream

  like half-leaves split in breaking mirror-glass

  and Muramasa shouted his edge’s perfection.

  The priest laughed toward his mountains soundless

  then produced from the shrine a katana blue as milk

  and pale as the thunder that hung in far cloudtops

  even as he waded to balance this swordpoint.

  Ninety-nine steps downstream from the gray sword

  before the wounded leaves could split apart

  they crossed the other edge’s flowing reflection

  and continued hail-struck to the long bright sea

  passing into the sea whole.

  The smith untied there his ruined sheath

  and he made an oath in his right hand

  drawing from split river-stones his beaten sword

  which could abide no sheathing unblooded.

  The priest Masamune with eyes so empty of victory

  who meant perhaps to speak had barely turned halfway

  before his lifeblood crashed spooling in water

  turning both edges’ reflection a momentary plum.

  Senzou Muramasa looked out to the mountains

  and frowned to see only mountains there

  so setting his own blade for the current to wash

  he slit his thumbprint red with the other edge.

  Now he rides the pathless mountains under hooded skies

  riding scabbardless and sleeping with blue hilt in hand

  and constantly a silver hail drives the smith Muramasa

  striking him like forge-sparks and like cast prayerbeads.

  His beard lengthens and grays with his seeking

  as he challenges each patron of his ravenous forge

  and holding his lifework in contempt for failure

  casts those blades to rust unblooded in obscure gullies.

  The apprentice was crippled at duel with his master’s creditors.

  Senzou Muramasa’s death on the hill called Kanarazu

  is recorded as suicide in Annals of the Chained Tigers

  without reference to the cessation of a meteoric hail.

  The crow took up a piece of wire and picked her tether free.

  In truth the ronin Bizen with morale shattered

  had drunkenly fled his red-eyed antagonist

  who never once permitted his blade a sheath.

  Wasps dug their house’s clay from the cheek of buddha Monju.

  In pursuit Muramasa’s ankle slipped between rocks

  and in falling he gashed his belly to the spine

  on the heaven-moted edge named Tender Hands.

  Years ago he rode away from a burning shrine

  and another sword propped among river-stones.

  That night the river split in half.

  HEY JUSTINE I WROTE YOU A POEM

  So in grade four, when listening sucked,

  we’d sneak Dragonlance books under our desks.

  How there’s three wizard guilds, distinguished

  by the pigment in their robes, their rigid faction

  moralities, and their chromatic totem moons.

  Good, neutral, and you-know-what. But all those

  common-ass herders and teamsters just figure

  Krynn’s got two moons. One ivory, one rust:

  whatever people see. That other moon, though,

  Nuitari? It knows what wizards really want.

  How red and white archmages can’t even tell

  it’s there, shaded out exactly like the night.

  How all those dark robes biking out for midnight

  spell component runs, they’ll stop to take it easy

  against some headstone carved like a baernaloth,

  spread out scrolls, maybe, if the turf’s wet,

  and trip out on the secret black moon.

  I mean today I did two pickle jars’ worth.

  Started this thing ten AM your time, when

  you said you did first pour. All things can be

  handled, but freaking out’s protocol. We stare

  down the philtre. How coffee’s actually red.

  A wagging wheel

  welcome to the smoking

  industry.

  it’s not what you

  think. it’s worse.

  ever since youtube

  got started we’ve been making

  like zero money.

  nobody pays anymore

  for smoking.

  all those

  iphone 6

  motherfuckers

  at the bus stop />
  doing streaming

  video,

  and white

  clouds in the office

  windows

  overhead

  clearing up

  one by one.

  now we’re working in

  rented port-a-

  potties. the

  big ones you can drive

  a wheelchair in.

  your bachelor’s degree? it’s

  a piece of paper.

  welcome to the smoking industry.

  four, five of us smoking

  in a green plastic

  shitter

  behind a horse stable

  only we’re still

  artists,

  artisans.

  in these suffocating

  boxes there’s

  no lights

  ventilation

  water

  or electricity.

  you can’t see your hands.

  you vomit.

  the office tips sideways.

  and when the cheques

  come they’re typed

  on the thinnest paper.

  basically kleenex.

  pissing blood

  after a long day’s

  smoking

  and the cheque’s ripped,

  you can’t

  read the numbers,

  then plus there’s the

  sixteen-year-olds

  who hitch here in freight cars,

  all clown paint and

  brandishing cleavers,

  they show up

  around sundown

  like a teen vampire movie

  and they don’t stop singing

  the same song.

  ROCK ME MAMA LIKE A WAGGING

  WHEEL, ROCK ME, MAMA, ANY

  WAY TIME TO FEEL, HEY, MAMA,

  WAKE UP AND ROCK ME

  ROCK ME MAMA LIKE A WINTER’S

  TURNING OF RAIN, ROCK ME

  MAMA ALL DAY IN A TRAIN, HEY,

  MISTER, YOU GOT A SMOKE

  and every one

  of

  them, in between

  the checkings

  of their phones,

  will ask

  to bum a smoke.

  they got on emergency

  psychiatric welfare by

  cutting

  GODSPPED U BLAKE

  EMPREOR

  into the ikea coffee

  tables

  of their mothers,

  and they say they stopped here

  to bum a smoke.

  they say that’s the only

  reason they stopped here.

  well fuck,

  rookie,

  this is it,

  the smoking

  industry. and

  fuck youtube and the world internet,

  fuck not being able

  to read

  cause you had one ordinary stroke, fuck

  mirrors cracking when

  they look at you,

  fuck dropping bread in the toilet,

  fuck

  warning labels

  getting bigger every morning,

  fuck

  trying to use

  a toothbrush when you

  have oral

  cancer, fuck the

  exchange ratio,

  fuck

  burn marks on my air

  fresheners, fuck the emergency

  tracheotomy industry,

  fuck

  being forcibly restrained

  and prevented from

  smoking

  at your own child’s sleepover,

  fuck tar sticking your eyes shut,

  fuck

  stepping outside

  for one minute

  and birds hitting you in the chest,

  fuck whoever came up

  with the name noam chompy

  for a dog,

  FUCKING KIDS

  GET OUT OF MY OFFICE

  WITH YOUR RUBBER BAND

  TOILET PAPER

  TUBE

  GUITARS.

  okay?

  okay.

  welcome to the smoking industry.

  here’s

  your gun.

  it probably won’t even go off.

  “We are more every day. And they do rely on us, Great-grandfather. But I don’t want the humans to pass into some further order. I want their dominion to fall, and the parts of the world to not be parts and work as one again.” Breathing, the Rabbit caught his sullen thoughts one by one on a cushion of breath, so that they would line up in each other’s company. He had learned the trick of breathing his mind from watching a wise old rabbit die, and it was still a great comfort to him without lungs.

  “The Boy used to press my face to the attic windowpane at night so that my button eyes would clack, telling me what he had learned in books of the night sky. He would trace constellations with his finger, as though they weren’t Real enough without him pointing out all their beginnings and ends. And now I wonder if it was for his sake not mine. If he could see the constellations at all as they crawled across the dark, burning, making their pointless wars. Perhaps humans have forgotten how, and only their books remember.

  “He whispered in my ear the Real stars were suns so far distant that their light was born before Rabbits or Boys ever were. And by the time their faces reached the world they’d all flown elsewhere in space, he said, and half had died to coals. So the stars weren’t even there; but if he was ever a grown man he’d call back their places. He’d use a book called Mathematics, which was far more Real than anything else in the world, and read backward from their light.

  “The stars needed him, he thought. I was a plush toy with boot-button eyes who’d barely been outside the house, and that shook me, even then. That the Boy, whose Nanas or Mother would carry him to bed under one arm, thought he’d do a favour to the night sky. To living eyes the stars are no more than cold little grains, but even then they’re enough to drive a boy’s dreams before him. The birds and beetles and moths, too, and all navigators; they take direction by the stars they see, not some stars behind the stars that cause them. And everything’s like the stars: only the least part of us is ever inside us. What makes a thing Real, it runs like the finest spider silk through every other thing.”

  The Rifle only wished to herself that she had been propped at a different angle, envying the Rabbit his position hung facing the window and the wide night. A rifle looks through her sight, of course; being a daytime toy, she could barely envision the stars. She was wishing to have been set toward one star or another, to better imagine shooting everything from the night in gray fire.

  ...and as though come to a sudden decision, more than half the words slipped down at once to gather in the nap of the rug. Their shapes were like a carnival of rotted things washed out of the sea’s deepest trenches with flesh so elaborately ragged that they seemed not at all degenerate but to have evolved in death along new principles of organization. Some seemed entirely built around gills and fronds, as though they breathed the air of their own decay; others were like the sacs of membrane and blubber that rise when the bones rot loose from the fallen corpses of whales, accreting tusks and scales and banks of jointed legs on their long spiral to the light. Treading shadow, they flapped and twisted and all those with faces stared up, desperately trying to meet the Rabbit’s gaze...

  SONNET FOR THE LAST FOLKFEST

  i ll spread your

  drumhead with a

  palm of

  sand and wait

  there in

  the night

&
nbsp; and there

  inside in the night

  soft ripples where

  your drumhead

  listened

  answered pounding

  echoes echo

  pulse and bound and

  echo

  echoes rouse the

  tautened air

  my skin

  inverts against the dark

  tonight our knuckles

  know a deeper

  rhythm shuttle snap

  than eardrums

  ever go

  my shoes

  can stay

  behind to gather

  blown leaves on

  the stair i m downhill

  down already far

  i m looking i

  m looking

  ghost i m looking

  for you there

  before the tide

  returns i ll lay

  your

  drumhead lay

  your drumhead

  down

  in kindling

  blaze

  and flickerhard and

  red upon

  the strand

  we ll stand across

  its cracking rim

  and burn

  the ocean

  dry and run

  and downhill down

  the cracking sand

  and rattle shattered

  drums

  and we will

  dance and

  we will dance to

  what we will

  become

  the wind

  will smoke

  with dust and

  everclear and blow

  our knuckles

  cross the empty sky

  and never

  sleep

  and

  blow down

  every

  year

  TO RED INK

  poets don’t kill each other

  at all anymore and

  it’s been way too long since lord byron

  —his buggering to death

  i mean,

  by h wadsworth longfellow—

  and i believe in credit when due,

  but

  that one

  was an accident.

  and i just keep thinking you, Bukowski...

  yeah,

  that bottle opener in

  seventy-two. such an incisive reading,

  how

  you bifurcated

  that beatnik’s sternum, and the ribs

  swung open like hands about to clap.