Nancy Dunlop / David Dowker

NEWS FROM THE GARDEN

1

Caught in this slow resolve 
toward astonishment

Purged.

              Ensconced.

                                    In-crypted to myth and larger titans.

The charm is the body. The body is the charm.

Addendum: Edenic: A priori 
charms. Tabula 
rasa. Bawdy rosy 
in tattoos. Indelible 
firstness.

                  *Beware this (imaginary) camera / and the shutter
                          clicks.

Young summer has no choice. The way it presses up 
and out. Immediately green and apparent. Everywhere 
unabashed like a big >oops<

(the patterns in the long grass, 
tufted tresses, tousled and nuzzled 
by that immediately everywhere 
and apparently transparent 
(I meant transpeared (or was it 
transpired?)) wholly modal 
troposphere))) Proof:

                                      >We can breathe anywhere<

...affirmative, yes 
the amorous pantherway travelled confidently, 
defiant wilding while the whirls nervously precipitate 
a ritual enthusiasm in the muse tent, 
behind the soothseeker's booth, 
around the shorn corner 
from the kabuki tattoo parlor

              do you know where we are? 
              what is the doing here?

                    <Yes naturally>

              Not so much where we are 
              but we are we are


2

This shrine rimed with 
forecasted memories 
is a place within speech 
a signage of things unstated 
a figment of imagined figs 
a portent of plums and 
promised potencies

a calyx stretched and cyclic 
potentate of plaintive hope

How oceans we know of 
are numbered and few

(we are everywhere 
and smaller than we think)

synchronic apertures 
and returns
                   / synchron 
-ic                                                How we 
shutter                                                         break 
click                                like grass

          (a flourish of her 
          starry cape and leap 
          into clair-audience, 
          the nape of 
          that gnoing, 
          a bottle 
          neck slides along 
          the ventriloquogrammic                                    [George Quasha]
          strings of that sacred 
          instrument)

Is it back along the tensile string 
toward the tuning fork? The timbre 
of iambic feets 
temporized in theorems?

          (Baby just packets of stutters here. 
          Capsules swelled with rime. 
          Ah these pristine morph-glyphs 
          hatching. These crackling 
          husks when shucked.)

Another sheath cracked open. Another 
diva opens her night cape. Ceremonial daemons 
demonstrate the necessity of the (e)motion.

          Instrumental

                               By design


3

Forgive (me) again this girth 
of melons. This heaviness of summer. These fingers 
too long dripping with wine and tendrilled 
stains of savor. Baby I'm roused and pelting. 
Tangled in >n-ether n-ore<

          We pluck mnemonic seed time
          with our tender shovels

          We speak the synaptic syntax
          of bees. A theurgy
          of junctures. Rings
          of Saturn.

(Call it hive politics. 
A simple reach toward innards of blossoms. 
A finger-dip in honey.

          Seed packets.

                                    Bees in pockets.)

          Iamb en-tranced, (a)swarm with semblance,
          a bundle of humming in my hands

These visionary schematics traced 
with light-finger, luminous volumes

the stars in jars

and exactly that 
matter of fact

en-chants

celestial little feet 
takes a foothold on 
the long and winding journey 
up the spiral stem

(thimble fulcrum)

Big Queen lambent and lowering down 
to you, little Drones, 
Sparring Synchrons.

          We get ultraviolet
          and follow
          the pheromone
          trail, bee real
          synaptic, click-
          track and all that,
          the honey dub

rosy Edenic a priori future 
folded into paper flowers 
or foolscapped birds 
of paradise, perhaps

Tattered notes to pull 
from the jacket. A whelm 
of origami. Craning 
paleness of devotion.

A bee in every crease and fold 
vibrato in each pocket.

...the singular trumpet of the datura flower, 
immaculate white, starfruit shape 
before unfurling

The body is the charm. The charm is the body.

((be theory and blossom))

          We hover
          over the (e)motion
          as twitching sects of
          mutually inclusive symbol systems
          and memantic agents of alien syntax
          compete for the Queen's careening
          attention

To push inexorable. 
Unfurl without volition 
or thought toward consequence.

Blind strain toward growth.


          Coda:

                    clematis burst
                              purple inflorescence visual
                                        splendour

                    arranged in relation to
                              our collective other
                                        life among the bees

                    and the serial interface protocols we negotiate
                              to maintain the hive,
                                        isolate

                    drone that I am
                              abstracted into, extract of
                                        machine

                    dreaming of being
                              translated, sated
                                        with the syrupy sensation of

                    such a heady nectar,
                              drowsy idleness finally
                                        flesh unencumbered,

                    impossible flight into virtual inclusion only
                              to fall as a shower of flowers
                                        or snowflakes

                    in summer, a solution in immersion,
                              in the workings, verbal
                                        terrain to be

<^>