Rankine - Incorrect Merciful Impulses

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One Tender Dear patriot Dear catastrophe None of this means what we thought it did Dear bone fragments Dear displacement Dear broken skin I am in over my head Dear prisoner Dear, dear wounded You have earned our respect Dear glad hands, curbed dog Dear perfect object The same night awaits us Dear put upon The day folds over and begins again Dear bad animal Dear caged thing There was something about you Symptoms of Prophecy In the new century, we lose the art of many things. For example, at the beep, I communicate using the wrong machine. I called to say we have two lives and only one of them is real.

When the phone rings: you could be anybody. In the evening: you are homeless and hunting for good light, as safe a place as any to make a bed for the night. In both my lives, my nerves go bust. Im certain that Im not as I appear, that Im a figment and youre not really here. The struggle is authenticity. I have a message.

You must believe me. Still Life with Spurious Picturesque The thought insists upon itself. The dead body of it, what you have put together: The hillside wont make sense. You run through the trees, but the trees lead nowhere. Didnt the sky come down on you like. Didnt you think you saw.

The irrational forest, your stupid mouth, a breath stillborn. Define: Lake. Ink stain. The cold, cold water. The hearts slow beat. There is no imagining anymore.

You awake and everything is flatter. You go outside and there is nothing to see. Dear Enemy: In the city, the climate is hostile, which suits me. The people are all demand: a sequel, a protagonist, something new to fear. Without you, we are uneasy what disquiet in this lack, all this emptiness to fill. Your fury is insistent, a ringing in my ear.

The hazard is high, which heightens my desire. Intelligence suggests we were designed this way, and the city, built to keep you out, keep me in need. The high ground is under attack, but the struggle feels far away, while that which I desire will eventually tire me its more than I can bear: this interminable want, turning and turning. The market responds favorably. Dear terror, I come looking and I find you everywhere. Symptoms of Island Sometimes in the morning your hand finds the dip in my side.

For the moment well call it happiness. This does not account for weeks spent cursing the apple trees, their sticky bloom. The man on the bus gaping at my slack lip knew. Plump dumb stone in my mouth. Im sure of it. That afternoon you were a brisk, starched thing.

We slipped out the back way, screen door banging cruel on my slim-boned grim. Today, like most days, my mind arrives an island, tongue-numb, child wishes ivied onto me. God takes away, its said. Call it what you will. Still Life Mechanical There is no flowering in my mind, no flower names, no prairies, no plains, no greenery. One tree, no leaves, two birds.

No words for birds. No fields of gold. No ripe. One hill, no wave, no roll. I am billboards & stone. I am all object, all dress, no bone.

No beast, no wild, no genus, humanoid. All edifice, all lamppost, no dusk, no star, no sky. One half-moon, no galaxy. No mountains majesty. One elevator, gliding up. All pulse, dull hum & buzz.

All crave, take, thirst. Ex Machina Every year is the year the world ends as I understand it X is to blame or aerosol or the barbarity of X in which we all partake as is our way we have come too far to turn away from this kernel that shapes us into other than animal or just animal enough to breed and break it is a science the study of what it is in this mind and muscle that makes us sway the weight of us toward give or take in the bare face of each open-mouthed need and what is our mistake this clamor that trails us that shakes us to sleep what we are capable of what great hope what will become of me Letter to the Winding-Sheet After the snowfall, snowfall jewels my hair, my church shoes muddy the bedspread. Crazy, you called me, not much of a lady. Flip up the light switch. A child, I act a child. At night I hold a postcard: two plums adorn a plum tree, what we could be. The door tight in its door frame, the window keeps shutting on me.

In every dream I dream I am asleep, your fingers closed around my wrists. Your breathing steals the room. You wont explain my shrinking vision, why I never knew enough about the topiary every limb is a root, every tree a tree. History Our stone wall was built by slaves and my bones, my bones are paid for. We have two of everything, twice heavy in our pockets, warming our two big hands. This is the story, as I know it.

One morning: the ships came, as foretold, and death pearl-handled, almost and completely. How cheap a date I turned out to be. Each finger weak with the memory: lost teeth, regret. Our ghosts walk the shoulders of the road at night. I get the feeling youve been lying to me. Necessity Defense of Institutional Memory So the free may remain free say the nightmare is the dream so we are preserved he who believes takes a life so a life may be saved the girl becomes an object so the greatest devastation occurs let go her fingers their slim cleave so I may be replaced by a machine which in its violence behaves more like me the longer you live the more these lies come alive so the past splits in two: one stays in the past and dies one past shape-shifts walks with you.

Always Bring Flowers Which is the way this goes again? Lockstep with me, one-two-three, bound in a box, taped to the floor. Draw my next step in chalk. Every atom of me says faster,giddy up up up, skull-fractured my skinny hope on the popcorn ceiling, eyes full of snow. Before we could beautify our death it was a white noise in my head, underwater red. The bullet holes in the walls were stars and stars. Ive been unrolling to a thin flat line, reaching long for an other-side.

Deliver me from the hothouse when its over. Carry the first fistful of earth. Fireblight The Bartletts are diseased, all half-scorched limbs and blackened leaves. For fear of God, we avoid the dirt, its reach. We bury the cow and we do not eat. We are living in a godless time. For fear of dark, we try to save ourselves and set the house on fire. We are living in a godless time. For fear of dark, we try to save ourselves and set the house on fire.