Laynie Browne
Amulet Sonnets
Picabia Olga Amulet
Read rivers, reverse red
Encumbered day does not inscribe
Outside faces lilt
We are not borrowed from air
I write from automatic pleasure of washing machines
Dead grass, mud, spring
And where do we live?
Beheaded, momentary chalcedony
Embedded lines account for gaze
Sinuous outlines are their own persons
I could watch them forever
Do not wait for recovery
Successive endings, beginnings
Clasped between eyes
Painted on 21st Street
Last night Thurston Moore sang Frank O’Hara
This morning Helen Frankenthaler
Sprawls invitingly through bright warm
Imposing rooms in Gagosian gallery
What I need more than sleep is company
Coffee grounds and sand upon a prepared
Surface of pleasure, where persons walk
Upon an untitled upside down balcony
Where primary colors were born and language
Arose between sentient beings
Pretending our make up is sound
Movement becoming a bridge between
Pretending our bodies sprawl invitingly
Through bright warm rooms in Chelsea
Helen Frankenthaler Suite
i.
Open Wall
In this room
With her paintings
I can breathe
Dear color field
Expansive lemons
And friends are
Above all
Not work
Dear lyric abstract
Open wall of
Astounding freedom
Coral catci under stain
No divisions, but color
Pardons
ii.
Seven Types of Ambiguity
1. Inclement weather
water being boiled
2. Past
parenthesis
3. Visceral
to part your instruments
4. Vistation
lope with red dot legs
5. Animal
looks back
6. Intimate
music
7. Grave
against return
iii.
Shatter
(five-fourteenth’s sonnet)
So simple isn’t
Embalmed
Scrawl and stretch
Figure is flower
Embedded in stalk
iv
Mountains and Sea
(one-half sonnet)
Beige rose in outline
Traces bare and plumed
Dolphin torso or arc
Delicate membranes
Stretch
Embalm a wall of
Bed fruit fire
Laynie Browne is the author of ten collections of poetry and two novels. Her most recent collection of poems, Lost Parkour Ps(alms) is out in two editions, one in English, and another in French, from Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havré (2014). She is a 2014 Pew Fellow. Forthcoming books include Scorpyn Odes (Kore Press) and P R A C T I C E (SplitLevel Texts).
Amulet Sonnets
Picabia Olga Amulet
Read rivers, reverse red
Encumbered day does not inscribe
Outside faces lilt
We are not borrowed from air
I write from automatic pleasure of washing machines
Dead grass, mud, spring
And where do we live?
Beheaded, momentary chalcedony
Embedded lines account for gaze
Sinuous outlines are their own persons
I could watch them forever
Do not wait for recovery
Successive endings, beginnings
Clasped between eyes
Painted on 21st Street
Last night Thurston Moore sang Frank O’Hara
This morning Helen Frankenthaler
Sprawls invitingly through bright warm
Imposing rooms in Gagosian gallery
What I need more than sleep is company
Coffee grounds and sand upon a prepared
Surface of pleasure, where persons walk
Upon an untitled upside down balcony
Where primary colors were born and language
Arose between sentient beings
Pretending our make up is sound
Movement becoming a bridge between
Pretending our bodies sprawl invitingly
Through bright warm rooms in Chelsea
Helen Frankenthaler Suite
i.
Open Wall
In this room
With her paintings
I can breathe
Dear color field
Expansive lemons
And friends are
Above all
Not work
Dear lyric abstract
Open wall of
Astounding freedom
Coral catci under stain
No divisions, but color
Pardons
ii.
Seven Types of Ambiguity
1. Inclement weather
water being boiled
2. Past
parenthesis
3. Visceral
to part your instruments
4. Vistation
lope with red dot legs
5. Animal
looks back
6. Intimate
music
7. Grave
against return
iii.
Shatter
(five-fourteenth’s sonnet)
So simple isn’t
Embalmed
Scrawl and stretch
Figure is flower
Embedded in stalk
iv
Mountains and Sea
(one-half sonnet)
Beige rose in outline
Traces bare and plumed
Dolphin torso or arc
Delicate membranes
Stretch
Embalm a wall of
Bed fruit fire
Laynie Browne is the author of ten collections of poetry and two novels. Her most recent collection of poems, Lost Parkour Ps(alms) is out in two editions, one in English, and another in French, from Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havré (2014). She is a 2014 Pew Fellow. Forthcoming books include Scorpyn Odes (Kore Press) and P R A C T I C E (SplitLevel Texts).