A
Palimpsest
by
brian howe
II. Cigarettes, the poet’s eyes, spinning & c.
Cigarettes
made life bearable but killed us faster. Still we loved to see
them arc into the night like distress flares, spinning tracers
searing afterimages of Ss and Os onto the colored, flaming parts
of our eyes. Liquor was to joy as Nutrasweet was to pure cane. We
squinted impotently at the dregs in the decanter: either the
bottle was too deep or our tongues too short. There was something
wrong with the moon. At some tacit signal or bad lunar cycle, our
relationships all fell apart simultaneously. The sky was a dead
metaphor, infinitely recycled. Still we could find some succor for
ourselves, in courageous directives such as The poet’s eyes must
widen toward a limit and always burn. Women were fatal accidents,
when they spun. The moon rolled in the hammock like a boulder in a
sling, then rose with a fabric POP! and hung at its pinnacle; a
foam ball in a schoolyard parachute game. Spinning, how much I
love you spinning. Or even when you sit in the ravine with
lemmings pelting your parasol, making a list of lists you need to
make. If replacing you were as simple as inflating a balloon or
singing aloud, of course I would spend my breath instead of
holding it in lines of text. There is more to be said on how the
memory of your body unspools like choppily spliced film, little of
it worthwhile. How you were the burning bush that centrally
pinioned my roving gaze, a defect in my vision. Or your profile
turning toward light was a distant horizon that retreated as I
approached. Then a voice rang out like clashing swords and a door
we hadn’t noticed burst open. The moon plunged, hissing steam,
into the fishbowl beneath the hammock. We steeled ourselves for
what came next and smoked whatever was at hand.