Meredith Quartermain

FILAMENTS AND LAYERS

who hath laid river
hook on the nook of a lake
long toes courian or limpkin

who hath stretched a meal of history
metal clasps oozing and leaking
from river ruts to colliers
worn with cartage

who hath laid dis-ease

go they to shine through a harsh cadence
in gossamer as one who made marsh meadows
bed with resembled plumage

who hath tanked water a train of thought runs off
from lobes or flaps of skin
people for wiring
four lines of sleepers

planks streaked with what igneous virus

who hath laid belly with pen
scored a songbottom
to flower ruts between cartage planks
and fringe with oysters the toes of a coal-horse

go they to steel bulwarks of cattle-cars
take race and clothe passage
rake skitter in life wheels
buckling iron to wire eye ionic

go they to flange flat sweet lace in the fields
wheels taper at flatbeds griddle of silent
belly-stock, secure to sleep
by spikes through hands and feet
stone smoke cigarettes ache
port-light at night

who hath laid leafblade or petal
three sheets in the wind silk
spill over curious ballast written wrench

who hath laid wing of a rail
in sand sea or air

go they fish-bellied sleep by spike
thinned till welded length to length
sleep-ribbon sleepers fix in flaxen sheaves
by bolts distillery mudthick
wheels through finfoot weave

work doth weave flanges abandoned as snow

who hath laid socket cotton
stops socketed in windsocks
fastened to sleepers clews
of a sail socked in sockeye
sockets wrench

buckling iron ions edge themselves
plunged before axles what is virtually flanged
without breath-maps
the spoilage

go they employed as torrid burrows
down from the creeping turnpikes
string of purpose threshing packthreads
sleep by a spike through belly stock
slats in fish-bellied rails
who whorl swamptoed and thin
through mazes of reeds on a long slake

who hath iron-wood sheeted ship-side
for filleted fir, strakes to hook-headed
scaffold twenty dogdays spin a layer
of moorhens in the new world
unwaste untraffic unscale unpeel unbung
un en on in on an ion, belly sooty
along trestles and sidings, belly sooty
what ties seeing

who hath laid river

go they to nest on the ground
to leaf earth about eels
now porous logistic schist

who hath laid river

spill out on this
if it takes all
 
 

LINEAR DIMENSIONS 4: INVERSION

version in version
a dish of the huge,
a white dome hazed in parallel classes
hanging pendence to hook as parallel to oblique,
night's hole of stars turning in to turn
to watch forever see never

imagine time without clocks,
time under lattice and tracery of lamplight
orange and black duck
holding page open at night
crossing quiet and sunflower cup
at wild cherry.

Okay, I'll have one of everything I say
to the foodstore in my head,
one of everything, I want it all, a yellow field
of butter 'n eggs, a panther-sized cat
named Spook, a spotted spaniel's eyes to hedge against
cinder-block wall of school, blank, good for balls, I s'pose,
unless windmills.

In verse ion I'm sand-eyed tired,
feet, hands wedged at cage door
to stay up just a little longer.

Uphill in a '40's Ford 10-year old velveteen dust,
peculiar dark of backseat upholstery, curved windows,
something wrong, no motor noise, we are not going up,
we hear crickets, tire crunch on gravel,
mother's face frowns over the seat
eyes peering at tiny back window,
inch of wheel on gravel, backwards,
going backwards bit by bit, mother
wedged between clutch pedal and carseat.
Don't move.
Don't even breathe.

Road smacks straight up
linear dimension steep beyond vertical,
invert, unhold spoke for the spindle
for the see-he-he-he  see-he-he-he
of the gulls. What word, what air
to offer bird or flock of leaves
across reticulate scaffold
beyond casements of keening sound —
inkstains on wood-lidded desks
rows of cast-iron feet bolted,
islanded among valleys child feet wore
day after day in the floor.

Nine o'clock gun.
Tide turns to is-land.
Evening crows trading news from the roof tops,
the location of cats, raccoons, and lagoons of garbage.
Humans holing up in their houses,
or skittering sideways from bars
to supine.
Next to inside out under inversion,
ridges of seam round armholes and sides.
Giddy giddy gout
yr liver's hangin' out.
Stitchings of systems, muscular, skeletal,
inside out — the big is-land roars
spliced in calculators, hamburgers, news,
raveled, disheveled.
Giddy giddy gout. Wrong side out.
 

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