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    I

    We have something we don’t want to know
    A landing in our instability
    A threshold in the taut pendulum

    Without belaboring the ice
    And transcendental opportunity
    For a heavy eraser applied to a pointed object
    The point lives between the ice and the solvent
    Lights camera inaction

    First and foremost smiles
    On the sink of our misgivings
    The residuals place outside a premium

    In the lonely reaches of salmon
    For total recall
    Apres moi great diffusion

    The halls of butterflies
    In the range of piebald
    If I’m not mistaken, a toehold
    A firm resistance
    Tame the pilot light
    Tonic for everyday pasts
    Humboldt looked into the fire and saw fire
    You will have to open for me
    The very integrated license
    The piecemeal piano and open bar
    Oh, so the brains here spoil
    The mathematics takes their place
    In the unlikely event a branch falls
    Inside the carrot house
    Inside a poached egg
    A stomach solvent

    For all the insight and application in the world
    The mind faces a polished holster
    The time releases its proper
    And you swing to the title
    Inside and out of the Amish stew
    Peaches and pelvic bones
    And a small registration to save
    To hew to the point of instants

    Early to clock, early to peacepipe
    Throttled by lefthanded
    The broken are handed over
    Given for the price
    Of two regal Eastman
    Time produced by laws
    Orifices healed

    Mom, the oranges delivered right to the façade
    Tonight to poise the purist
    And so, the phone breaks to an outlet
    A spiny surface for a holiday rodeo
    To pull the face up to the level of the sill
    Perfect disappearance
    Because one does disappear
    And maintains a connection
    A true connection
    For as long as 70 years, say

    Mom, the last and honest-to-goodness
    I almost remember something from last night

    Mom, inside this hour, inside the toolbox
    Forces rake the pearls
    They delegate and then bow to the demands of Parliament, right?

    Mom, for the fallen to remember their serial
    The lemon pelts the messenger

    Mom, all for an orange, a taste of hills
    All for brainy slices, reasoned holidays
    So methodical after laughter

     

     

    II

    Mom, the sewing has come to a point where the incunabula
    After our pointed session offering

    Mom, the dogs dispute the highway
    Without an insistence, a policy preference
    Before we ever examined the insidious
    The take has now closed and, unfailingly, the reeve is up

    Mom, take the horns to the sail maker
    Inside the snorkel, inside
    The sausage making ended before Iron Tuesday

    Mom, underneath the pillow, inside the hide box
    Inside the spoon, inside the gesture
    If it’s possible to discuss crooks
    If a good reason, a very good reason
    Finding is half the problem

     

     

    III

    Mom, the rice takes its cue from the pigsty
    The houseboat sleeps for weeks

    Mom, if the tuckus withholds any solvents
    The firmament loves its tiedye
    The apple exists in splendid isolation
    Faces reign in a small kingdom

    Mom, we follow you to that place
    Oil rings hell on wheels
    In the future, in the icy parking lot
    In the future, under lock and key
    In the future, first and foremost
    In the future, the first question
    The first question, the first question

    Mom, in the future, in the hologram
    The undersized, small-ball, peaches ‘n cream
    Peas and potatoes, you know, everything

    Mom, the fall, the foil, the holiday ice
    If you follow this thought to its conclusion
    If you follow the racy sentences
    Emerging signs ring the tollbooth

     

     

    IV

    The final touches have been put on “Ophelia”
    Inside the telephone booth, hooked there
    Eleven sandwiches sit side by side, imperceptibly deteriorating

    The movie doesn’t know where to end
    Inside the purple pleasure principle

    And the soy places its hand on the face
    And eleven Sundays open into the 1,116th dimension
    And now that lemons shine in the artificial light
    And inside this broken-down bowling ball
    This polished

    Since that February night, the rhymes raced
    And the onions made their point

    Red billows and phones cross the night
    The tonsils will not sing

    Reagan’s shadow has not died

    The songbirds
    Riding the thoroughbreds
    The eleven seasons exchange characteristics
    And regroup, as extras now, in another movie
    Mom is dying

     

    Michael Ruby is the author of a number of poetry books, including American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013) and The Mouth of the Bay (BlazeVOX, 2019), as well as the trilogy in prose and poetry Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices (Station Hill Press, 2012). He is the co-editor of Bernadette Mayer’s collected early books, Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words (Station Hill, 2015), and Mayer’s and Lewis Warsh’s prose collaboration Piece of Cake (Station Hill, 2020). He lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor of U.S. political articles at The Wall Street Journal.

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