from SAVE

The player piano was haunted.

No one knew
the difference between

it and its twin
in Sioux City,

which had no spirit.

Saloons these days still reek

of hollowed peanut
shells.

Still cover puke with sawdust.

They play La Paloma of
Her Own Volition.

The machine rolls, the
keys get depressed.

Just like that, some drunk
in the corner

starts singing.

Bookstore

The bookstore was on top of another store
at the corner of a busy street. I walked up the stairs
and was met by God, a middle-aged woman
with blonde hair and glasses. God told me to take
my time looking around her father’s store. The
store had not been in operation for several years.
Who’s God’s father? I wondered. No one ever
talked about him. It was once a fine store that sold
rare and out-of-print books, she said. It now sat
dusty, and soon the building would be sold. A
lot of organization is needed, I said. She agreed.
I picked up a white and brown plastic clip-on
earring off the floor and put it on. It looked like
the kind of earring my mother kept in her jewelry
boxes, so I made a mental note to find the other
one straight away. But something drew me to the
back of the store, even though I didn’t want God
to think I planned to steal the earring, which
must have been worth a lot of money. I walked
past bookshelves, which were in varying stages of
disarray and stopped at a corner shelf near the back
exit. There I found a navy blue ledger. When I
opened the ledger I saw a list and then I saw my
name and signature and the date—January 11,
1993. That’s me, I said to God who was now standing
beside me. Yes, she said, I knew you’d come back
for it. And then she walked to the front, leaving me
alone to figure out exactly what I had come for.

Mt. Rushmore Poem

Six thousand pounds of dynamite
for the father of my country.

A chisel for God’s messenger, detained.
A hammer as his cue:

Washington: Bring the money.

Jefferson: It’s soft.

Borglum: Move behind Washington, and Roosevelt, back.

South Dakota: It’s odd here.

Italy: It’s old.

Michelangelo: That’s freedom: a new face in an old place.

Han Solo: I know.

I stood at the rail, put a quarter in, and received my 90 seconds
set aside for detail:

Theodore, sweating,
Tom staring off at the hills.
Abraham, in absentia,
George, chest out.

Susan B. Anthony (at home): All rise for the Federal Boys Club.

Roosevelt (to tourist): Take the fucking photo.

Jefferson (erected): Leave your likeness where they worship.

The stationary viewer clicked closed, and mother
led me to Crazy Horse in-progress. I looked at the mountain,
the face emerging from it, then the plaster mockup
on the boardwalk by the gift shop.

Ziolkowski (on his death bed): Do it slow. Do it right.

He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service
with a 13-cent stamp.

TORCH SONG: HOLY DAY

Our woman of black knees
in the dirt she is singing
sweetheart spit your teeth
into my hand and for you
I will play the finest rattle

•

The gossip about god was
he’s a woman drinks rotgut
no camisole sees the veins
in his husband’s eyelids says
hallelujah this is all my fault

TORCH SONG: SLUMGULLION

We come from low country we say
when thunderheads growl that’s god
talking to himself when lightning
strikes your mother down in a field
that’s god saying I’ve got a question

•

The furrow belongs to the crows now
no last stalk no cornhusk doll to march
through town and hang from the door
of the landlord who says shut her out
should the wheat ghost come to yours

TORCH SONG: CHANTEUSE

Hair teased out like a flame
an old standard (for the crowd)
got a feeling cause I’m blue oh
lord it disgusts me heartache
all this spectacle and prayer

•

There are nights I suspect
I will find you your fingers
sear at the tips a music box
in your hands your refrain
will no one turn this crank

Money Bin

I got a tattoo of God. You can’t see it
but it’s everywhere. If I seem out of it,
do the math. I was put on earth.
And then you were, making up your feet
as you went along. New thinspo clanks the spank
bank. New emoticon makes a Holocene.

If you want to get in shape you have to jog
your memory of Euclid. Jesus built
a ship in a ship shape and said
there’s plenty of loaves in the sea.
Some Idaho you turned out to be.

Some money bin I, a rich duck, swim in!
The coins of you in my feathers like water
off my back. I count each red cent of you.
Now the rain with its funny money din.
The rain beats a tattoo of God any day.

The Olden Days

Spirits make THE THUMP.
Have you ever felt THE SHAKE.
Walking backwards on the Bridge of Names.
Even when I was not holding your hand.
Spooky boys laughing in the lake.
Have you ever been to the VERY BOTTOM?
Bad things happening in those woods.
I was not holding YOUR hand.
The dead face kills me again.
I am on the kitchen floor.
You are on the back road.
WAIT.
Where were we.
Running backwards on the shaking Bridge of Names.

–Lauren Ireland

What It Feels Like For a Girl

We are poco a poco, becoming witchy on a need-to-know basis. Our elders foist their little bottles of enzymes on us. Life experience naturopathy. In their presence, we do strange things: drink ginger and vinegar lemonade, lie down on the floor for past life regression. A few drops of oregano oil in a shot glass filled with water and, as with a dab of wasabi, come clear sinuses. Left alone again we find it’s a little too quiet and we forget the difference between good and bad bacteria. We get scared. Intend to meditate and stretch, to host a dinner party sometime soon.

–Krystal Languell

When the Victim has Collapsed & Cannot be Lifted

The matchstick lady dances in a bowl of fire.
“Fire” –So very American, writes Larry Levis.
Casual and therefore exalted over angels, writes

Hermes Trismegistus. I’ve been thinking
about Tabitha. Her baby seals and black
pepper. The way she jimmies the diaspora

of the least fetching bishop and huddles
coldly in the back pocket of the Oldsmobile.
I want to poke her with a cheap umbrella

beneath a mutual communion of stars.
Yep, you’ve seen it coming for a long time,
the crescendo arrives like a blue rhinoceros,

horn aflame. And death, death wears a nice tie,
picks up the check, combs over a few greasy
strands of hair like a man with many watches.

Promises, Promises

Let’s only bless each other
Said the mad priest to his cross
The cross chuckled
And jumped to the ground
The priest watched it hop away
The priest sighed
And drearily married his left foot
To his right

And we must never be honest with each other
Vowed a man to his wife
She took away her veil
And planted flowers in her moles as he stared
It is for the best, she agreed
Applying warts to his teeth

What can we do
I asked my body
We can twist your skull
Into star metal
But besides that

I want to sing all the songs
The man said to his coffin
The coffin opened and closed
And offered a steady beat

GIRLS WHO ARE UNFAITHFUL AND AT THE SAME TIME RELENTLESSLY HONEST

Girls who are unfaithful and at the same time relentlessly honest
Are not operating in accord with the Darker-Than-Any-Mystery.

Only she who is relentlessly faithful and meanwhile full of lies
Can be said to be in accord with the Darker-Than-Any-Mystery.

The madness of love takes many forms. In me, it’s the illusion
I am Abul-Majd Majdud ibn Adam Sanai Ghaznavi.

Hé wanted the whole universe to be an unconjugated verb.
I won’t say which, I’ll let you guess. Ha!—right on the first try.

Yet, to me, “love” is not even a noun; it’s merely a case inflection.
Any name in the D-L triple-X can be inflected for Ishq-e-Majazi.

So, don’t say “God is great.” Say “God is glamour”—it’s what you mean.
The Almighty bottoms the bhakti. God is the ultimate top. And that’s why

The Tibetan Fuckmaster King says if a halt were put to all coupling,
The human race would end, not after a generation, but that very instant.

And if I am impenetrable in this and my other verses,
It is only because you can’t penetrate | a wall that is not there.

I am the poet Mardud; I had no childhood. Whoever wants
To get at my meaning will have to turn her back on her childhood.

Regional Transportation District

On the bus I saw the scientists. They were re-enchanting
the commute. Atom after atom exploded for them;
every instant they looked at—a kiss, a tattoo—
bloomed, and I learned to hate my kaleidoscope
for making such cold work of beauty. Things change!
At the back of the bus, professor-poets schmoozed Western buddhists
and their backstage passes dazzled us all.
A child, I wanted the buddhists’ marigold minds
and t-shirts, but the scientists wore mild beards of wonderment
and every rider turned a blind eye
to the small-time pushers, the new money planting our medians,
the government building’s blacked-out windows,
and the small way my friend with the yellow braids
vanished. Every loss is a chrysalis, said the oldest poet
through his four-part beard, a living mandala on the 204.
Beard like a river, a tantrum, a tendrilled florescence,
and I pulled the bell-string, exercised my small power. In memoriam
I fixed a dead-grass soup, a weedy tea—scent of paste,
of making. Now the driver wears high-end headphones
and I see the signs for peace and anarchy
switchbladed into safety glass, the scientists
taking pills in precise measurements, pale tongues of gum
stabbed by poets’ pencil tips. The buddhists gone bald
and gossiping in the back, everyone reciting
an abracadabra: Prayer wheels. Power plants. Bluebells. Bus tokens.