The Hour of the Rat
We were in the woods, at first
on a road
in an underpass
feeling safe, 5 pm
We passed a woman and man
setting up their panhandling,
smiling
as if into a mirage
a demon carnivorous
with a head the size of a planet
the man got scared ran into the leaves
the woman wearing fleece
did all the setting up
I wanted to say, No one’s coming through
you should go to 4th or
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The woods
were calm,
we were descending
?
a narrow cliff ledge
mountain goats or mules
might travel
a sheer drop thousands of feet,
ten miles to the ground
which was, from that height,
earth the vast unchanging desert
the first generation of skin
shaved down
to the lunar plants camouflaged
into the plaster-white dust
and gray-dust without people
the oasis, stormed out of itself,
emptied the land
festered f
was a planet
alienating
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Last night, for example,
we were in a city
the streets were steep
and covered in moss,
we were gliding
down the streets medieval stones,
cemeteries on every shoulder,
Earlier we were drinking milk with straws
the milk was on the floor entertainment
We glided
the moss
We passed an enormous house,
the house where the mother lived many boats
stacked on top of each other,
is how a millionaire lives
neverending
with milk
The woman was cagey,
had a child cauliflower
+
You sing the words of every book,
and the words become soft
you hold the softness in your lap
with a presence in which all earnings are kept,
and emanate
the cologne of policy occupation
while the story [is] sung
milk on the heads
moss, moss too
a sunflower
+
Earlier we were on a sheep farm
the sheep were dead,
their bodies denuded, strewn like driftwood
An unseen force was shooting from the sky
was the day before Pearl Harbor
we did not see the sheep being murdered,
as we crashed the woman’s house,
slid down the moss
with milk on the floor,
the earth below empty
+
The cliff ledge was so narrow
I did not think we were going to make it
There was nothing to hold on to
the cliff was white,
the milk had dried,
earth above the earth
was petrified
milk,
and we were sliding down it.
Remember when we walked freely through the seasons?
The Hour of the Rat
for Akaresa
I walked past the men
in the empty fields
and entered a long track between fences
By walking, I thought, I’ll escape
the turning of the town
into a stadium
where dismemberment is routine,
and into another more
earthen country.
At the end of the fences
four long root cellars had been neglected.
Everyone who tended them was dead,
their descendants slept openly sometimes
falsely
at the table, like vents
in winter storms
An old man, no one’s uncle
emerged from the root cellar
carrying two large tumors,
the old man held out
as if
the Tree of Life
coiled had roseate spirals
i i touched Harvested
at dusk
love grew
subdued
Because
the vacuum is complete,
you’re never safe
mmake god
The Hour of the Rat
I have a dog. The dog is not mine.
Have, like having sex?
having dog.
in the woods, walking a path.
the woods tilt become triangle.
The dog is a train, pulling me
to the top of the woods
We lived on
that lake.
in the midst
of babies. Innumerable
not many We knew.
We were focused
on solitude, kept inviting friends over,
There was a fake fireplace
and a bag of carrots
The lake turned to ice.
one night.
quasars bounding
the sound of
The Field
two daughters began talking to us,
several more daughters appeared
until there were twelve or eleven
We listened to them explain
The Field—
a place, the daughters said,
we simply had to go.
They gathered at the window
Can we see it from here?
a field with grass and flowers,
No,
How can we
explain? They didn’t
try. But you have to
go. Is it far?
a 2 mile walk Just
follow the road.
We climbed into a makeshift wagon,
strapped Yumi’s stroller to the back
passed a mall
Then the road ended
And we were in the woods
crossing streams
that flowed into waterfalls,
cold clear
our feet became bare
to endure the moment of pleasure finality,
because that is where we were
when it ended
the sound of the waterfall
the bold mirror sunk into
the shadow of the pond
to the bottom of the pond
spun into a brown sugar extract
We had been turned loose
had been promised The Field,
but virtues were singular, could not be replicated
our crossing the stream
was tantamount
to liberating ourselves from believing, belief
We were deer, a family of deer,
passing into the camouflage mystic