READING "JAMES SCHUYLER'S PASTORAL POETICS"
The best things about you are innocent wrongs
once leaning against a stool
a firm patience that doesn't outtalk itself
long walks when wetness left us
"kindergarten" drinks together
all night poetry every night
living together even when we never have
or will knowing what it feels like
waking to have a cup of coffee
cities in our shared blood
once I pour out everything I have and everything
you are is so natural this artifice
where no one is lied to
we each recognize there is this between us
an easy come and go of affection
wafts of fog about bright moon-lit building-tops
lack of perfect grace pushed further out as the years come
being you is the reward of poetry the you
& you know me as you are red or pale fading
re-affirming coming on strong or quietly
a belt on a pair of jeans longing rides upon
- Patrick James Dunagan
HERE AS BREATHY NERVE
Slowly past this reader you read
and as you lightly perplex a perplexity lines from me
all the read lines perplexed planted
and in your plant i rave, here
have rolled a raving
have blued the roll and blessed
living its linear and planted blue
its blessing to black so raving and rolled.
Now morphing into this blue living
black to your morphosis, your blessed variant
I vary for you faring
so that we living could reach black fare
at the morphous reaches I breathe various
our breath fair and reaching
by the wish
our whorls wishing – whorling
Now, here as breathy nerve and feeling
nerve this pitch
I feel almost wished to
pitch from your slippage you have slipped me
and from my count I have counted you whorled
Comanche X
for Rita
Think I’ll try and
make way through wooden veins
what’s left of today
frayed denim an
oozing
leak in the rear differential
snow drift
crystal foot powder
tiffany comfort
when under the microscope
clearer intentions
bubble up
brain waves
transect
predator prey populations
I would like to be
Redd Foxx
if only
to remain
perilously on top
of the Situation
Smorg #2 will be held in late May or June. Stay Tuned!
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