Jeanne Heuving
from Frequency
Fotunate Torsos
Something like me. Dirty water in the quart jar we tried to keep clean. Slosh with boats
of bark, slur into currents. Three plastic daisies on astroturf. Nothing strikes like a hawk,
a crouching hare. She sings her rose petal body home. To rinse until the clear whitens.
Angle eyes. Sweetheart.
Fine Reticule
To say any such thing that will make us glad. Rub a dub dub three men in a tub. Three
plastic daisies on astroturf. Entangling strands of dirty water. To clean until the clear
whitens. Pitches salt. Sheep roam in the gloaming.
Brows
Mouth around mouth around words. Mouthing words. Soft shoe. Shoeing it. Schussing
down the mountain. Sluice run off. Such unnatural preternatural clarity. Rough brown
roads visible from this far distance. Lofty. Rafter. Browse.
Grays
A lemon snow cone. Sluice run off. Fine screen catching stones, some pretty. Tiny
craniums, blackened skulls. Black netting crawling over eyes. Beauty mark. A valve or
gate to regulate the flow. To flood or drench with released water. To draw off.
Sidelong. Graze.
Drowse
Berries. Black dot. Glistening. Piled to the rafters. Popping bird. Toppling trees. Twig
in beak. Beaking it. B-eking it. Clattering capsules. Broken chamois. Bare branched
mountain ash with clusters of orange-red. Smashed on sidewalk. Smeared yellow.
Dowse.
Dowse
Drenched weave. Reordering to get the snap of synapse. Lines on cerebral cortex. Lines
inside fleshy creases creasing secreting lemony watery. Berry juice on lips. Berry flesh
on tongue. Douse.
from Chthonic
Furrow
How all is a fertile field ever threatening
Plowed too close like an ominous sky
Earth ever opened the possibility of
Into the plowed furrowed lined earth
A fertile plow into the staid forestation
Into the silvered peat moss lined with
A jewelry box felted with diamonds
_________________
seeds with their hooded black jackets
carapace of insect left to wither in the wind
to mash with a mallet to get the insides out
a round hole bored in the seed by a weevil
seeds of the penstemons and the mulleins
are easy to remove by the crushing method
to remove the seed heads the cones must be
split open washed inside minute stuffs
___________________
the possibility of light falling onto his face
the possibility of walking into a sunlit alcove
the sunlit alcove fitting rippling like a glove
the glove moving from finger tip to forearm
silky on flesh receptive to being touched
harvested when a light brown will turn black
deadening hollow black seeds refusing
____________________
What does not go away this
Mascared eyes, Cleopatra
Charcoaled Marlene Dietrich
Wanting at the grave as it
Leaks light
Florescence
Through hallways of rising water
Dark sedge to stay here in this
Netherworld refusing to see above
A water line as it creases the eye
Swimming forward to this line
Of entry no entry you hold me
Rising descent into nearness
To see through other eyes
To see through mine
The plunging water picks me up
This lunging of a place
Moving forward into
Underwater under kind
Traveling dark stream of streaked
Beatitude choosing to eat the seeds
Of death to take in each grain
Winnowing for grain for seed
Heated by sun flooding hallway
By river watching through mirror
Filtered, carrying sludge, sedge
Underwater coursing vision
Line of water as it cuts
from Limning
Limning
The possibility in this clutch
That I should find you.
And still you are traveling
Long lane with trees
Slashed hello.
To see your face anywhere.
Soft pulp of body.
Untold reflection makes cuts
In skin. Struck tine.
Reparative. Cut.
Please comply with lighted signs.
Direct passage away from aircraft.
White hyphenated line. Floatable cushion.
Brace position.
Hug.
Trying to find you in clutch.
Branching to fall. Used tire dump.
Harvester junk yard. Too random
Finally. No sound issues
For a pass key to the frame.
Long dark shafts of storm
Supplanting love. Children's
Dark eyes lost in
Childhood's recesses.
Vacating the capitol
As the storm of winter approaches
Sky whitening, slackening.
Going into you as we depart
Spilled nectarine
Dash of cinnamon.
Being lost in a hotel
Candelabras, catacombs
Candle behind eyes as we
Journey through shadowy
Brown cavernous mountains
When all that rings
The horizon are trees.
Tears pummeled out of the earth.
This pummeling of our
Bodies ever to go away.
To sear seer. This going around
Emptiness. How we both form
In the upwelling of your drifting
Sage.
Salver.
Stille nacht. Stillness into balance.
This tipping into each other, into eyes.
This preening of your flesh.
The sorrow of your sorrow
Black gold.
Denatured neuter.
Fearsome sans toothed pines
Hoarfrost standing in for appetite.
This pellucid showering
In the gesture of comeliness.
Endless night with you, in you.
Pitch of pented paint. Feint going over.
This ever surfacing, breaking
Scuttle sky hawks
Wheeling doves
Eagles next
Satyr
Dog.
Keyless exchange of no entry.
Your body an empty rack
Of nerveless intent
Where feeling might begin.
Drearest loss of spell.
Syncopate. Double intake
Breath.
Love long lost discovering.
Sudden dusk of light
Agog with overcry.
Never more.
Never the less.
This writing in your wake. To return
With infinite regress of stille nacht blue.
Windowless agape. Eros dark night
Of winter storm. This whitest
Darkest gem.
Itinerant traveler over the rust belt.
Fradulent eyes. Hands.
Watershed.
This always to begin in me.
Decibel. Siecle.
This coming into and out of me.
Foreign body of the arriviste
Onto new soil.
Fallen blackened leaves.
Telescopic syncopating
Into never ever more could we.
Rind of orange dropped soundlessly
Glassed in hallways, passageways
Thorax opening, promulgating.
Lax.
Falling in between each other
Into face, coinage, minted
Wheeling, grayed wants.
Keyless exchange
Of no entry.
Thunder whitening breath
Boisterous no sight
As the storm of winter approaches
Promises to blanket
An entire region.
Pellucid translucent rice
Eaten with termites, tics
Sticks in cotton.
A dark swirling comma
Reaching down.
Dear, drearest, moody blue
Veined, silvered tip of quill
Till dark keep writing into
The no appearance
Of disappearance.
Folding into ewes, eyes
Sheer joy falling, this tuck
In myself, into the hourglass
Crystals sifting
Over the world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: These poems were published in my book, Transducer, Chax Press, 2008. They were previously published in Titanic Operas, 26, and ‘A Right Good Salvo of Barks’: Critics and Poets on Marianne Moore. In“Furrow,” the second section is indebted to Harry R. Phillips' Growing and Propagating Wild Flowers, University of North Carolina Press, 1985. In "Limning," the lines “Reflections make / cuts in the skin” and “No sound issues for a pass key tothe frame” are adapted from J.H. Prynne.
from Frequency
Fotunate Torsos
Something like me. Dirty water in the quart jar we tried to keep clean. Slosh with boats
of bark, slur into currents. Three plastic daisies on astroturf. Nothing strikes like a hawk,
a crouching hare. She sings her rose petal body home. To rinse until the clear whitens.
Angle eyes. Sweetheart.
Fine Reticule
To say any such thing that will make us glad. Rub a dub dub three men in a tub. Three
plastic daisies on astroturf. Entangling strands of dirty water. To clean until the clear
whitens. Pitches salt. Sheep roam in the gloaming.
Brows
Mouth around mouth around words. Mouthing words. Soft shoe. Shoeing it. Schussing
down the mountain. Sluice run off. Such unnatural preternatural clarity. Rough brown
roads visible from this far distance. Lofty. Rafter. Browse.
Grays
A lemon snow cone. Sluice run off. Fine screen catching stones, some pretty. Tiny
craniums, blackened skulls. Black netting crawling over eyes. Beauty mark. A valve or
gate to regulate the flow. To flood or drench with released water. To draw off.
Sidelong. Graze.
Drowse
Berries. Black dot. Glistening. Piled to the rafters. Popping bird. Toppling trees. Twig
in beak. Beaking it. B-eking it. Clattering capsules. Broken chamois. Bare branched
mountain ash with clusters of orange-red. Smashed on sidewalk. Smeared yellow.
Dowse.
Dowse
Drenched weave. Reordering to get the snap of synapse. Lines on cerebral cortex. Lines
inside fleshy creases creasing secreting lemony watery. Berry juice on lips. Berry flesh
on tongue. Douse.
from Chthonic
Furrow
How all is a fertile field ever threatening
Plowed too close like an ominous sky
Earth ever opened the possibility of
Into the plowed furrowed lined earth
A fertile plow into the staid forestation
Into the silvered peat moss lined with
A jewelry box felted with diamonds
_________________
seeds with their hooded black jackets
carapace of insect left to wither in the wind
to mash with a mallet to get the insides out
a round hole bored in the seed by a weevil
seeds of the penstemons and the mulleins
are easy to remove by the crushing method
to remove the seed heads the cones must be
split open washed inside minute stuffs
___________________
the possibility of light falling onto his face
the possibility of walking into a sunlit alcove
the sunlit alcove fitting rippling like a glove
the glove moving from finger tip to forearm
silky on flesh receptive to being touched
harvested when a light brown will turn black
deadening hollow black seeds refusing
____________________
What does not go away this
Mascared eyes, Cleopatra
Charcoaled Marlene Dietrich
Wanting at the grave as it
Leaks light
Florescence
Through hallways of rising water
Dark sedge to stay here in this
Netherworld refusing to see above
A water line as it creases the eye
Swimming forward to this line
Of entry no entry you hold me
Rising descent into nearness
To see through other eyes
To see through mine
The plunging water picks me up
This lunging of a place
Moving forward into
Underwater under kind
Traveling dark stream of streaked
Beatitude choosing to eat the seeds
Of death to take in each grain
Winnowing for grain for seed
Heated by sun flooding hallway
By river watching through mirror
Filtered, carrying sludge, sedge
Underwater coursing vision
Line of water as it cuts
from Limning
Limning
The possibility in this clutch
That I should find you.
And still you are traveling
Long lane with trees
Slashed hello.
To see your face anywhere.
Soft pulp of body.
Untold reflection makes cuts
In skin. Struck tine.
Reparative. Cut.
Please comply with lighted signs.
Direct passage away from aircraft.
White hyphenated line. Floatable cushion.
Brace position.
Hug.
Trying to find you in clutch.
Branching to fall. Used tire dump.
Harvester junk yard. Too random
Finally. No sound issues
For a pass key to the frame.
Long dark shafts of storm
Supplanting love. Children's
Dark eyes lost in
Childhood's recesses.
Vacating the capitol
As the storm of winter approaches
Sky whitening, slackening.
Going into you as we depart
Spilled nectarine
Dash of cinnamon.
Being lost in a hotel
Candelabras, catacombs
Candle behind eyes as we
Journey through shadowy
Brown cavernous mountains
When all that rings
The horizon are trees.
Tears pummeled out of the earth.
This pummeling of our
Bodies ever to go away.
To sear seer. This going around
Emptiness. How we both form
In the upwelling of your drifting
Sage.
Salver.
Stille nacht. Stillness into balance.
This tipping into each other, into eyes.
This preening of your flesh.
The sorrow of your sorrow
Black gold.
Denatured neuter.
Fearsome sans toothed pines
Hoarfrost standing in for appetite.
This pellucid showering
In the gesture of comeliness.
Endless night with you, in you.
Pitch of pented paint. Feint going over.
This ever surfacing, breaking
Scuttle sky hawks
Wheeling doves
Eagles next
Satyr
Dog.
Keyless exchange of no entry.
Your body an empty rack
Of nerveless intent
Where feeling might begin.
Drearest loss of spell.
Syncopate. Double intake
Breath.
Love long lost discovering.
Sudden dusk of light
Agog with overcry.
Never more.
Never the less.
This writing in your wake. To return
With infinite regress of stille nacht blue.
Windowless agape. Eros dark night
Of winter storm. This whitest
Darkest gem.
Itinerant traveler over the rust belt.
Fradulent eyes. Hands.
Watershed.
This always to begin in me.
Decibel. Siecle.
This coming into and out of me.
Foreign body of the arriviste
Onto new soil.
Fallen blackened leaves.
Telescopic syncopating
Into never ever more could we.
Rind of orange dropped soundlessly
Glassed in hallways, passageways
Thorax opening, promulgating.
Lax.
Falling in between each other
Into face, coinage, minted
Wheeling, grayed wants.
Keyless exchange
Of no entry.
Thunder whitening breath
Boisterous no sight
As the storm of winter approaches
Promises to blanket
An entire region.
Pellucid translucent rice
Eaten with termites, tics
Sticks in cotton.
A dark swirling comma
Reaching down.
Dear, drearest, moody blue
Veined, silvered tip of quill
Till dark keep writing into
The no appearance
Of disappearance.
Folding into ewes, eyes
Sheer joy falling, this tuck
In myself, into the hourglass
Crystals sifting
Over the world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: These poems were published in my book, Transducer, Chax Press, 2008. They were previously published in Titanic Operas, 26, and ‘A Right Good Salvo of Barks’: Critics and Poets on Marianne Moore. In“Furrow,” the second section is indebted to Harry R. Phillips' Growing and Propagating Wild Flowers, University of North Carolina Press, 1985. In "Limning," the lines “Reflections make / cuts in the skin” and “No sound issues for a pass key tothe frame” are adapted from J.H. Prynne.