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.