Camille MARTIN

call me i

banner of piano keys, sways & bumps, hidden jackpots with jagged edges,
rocking on tracks, the first smudge in an empty book

i pretend i have a weakness
for interrupting hunger,
delving & shaking it inside out-
side in. the message is dying the
flag is dying, given a mere
chink in the wall of any sup-
position - i shun i shudder
i am blank under a tangled
blanket. i equals the print, the
boulder equals tatters
in the wind, speckled shrines
equal glazed egrets. time
to observe the blueness
of the sky equals the
bad habit of the "sky"
which used to be a dome
under which bastions crumbled
& rows of trees in future snow drifts
fluttered & impaled frozen air under
cover of a fantasy of perfect clarity

or drink or click or wherever syntax leads, the belvedere's pink slo-mo
flowers i nothing pluck from borderlands up in a tree engraved with a blue
knife one midsummer's night

staying "put" in the myth of one place,
rusted buckets rusted roof rusted
tracks in stages of comedic decay, "why
can't i see nothing what you see?" i, jostling alien,
grasp at moss growing on unsteady pillars.
a dubious freedom to misremember
the measured air of rubricked suburbs.
planning ahead saved my life.
acting spontaneously saved my life.
i am therefore hollow & i gamble
on the water level in my muscular heart,
full of misguidings on the "now" question, clutching
doubtful statistics on battered wheels: automatic
flags, one per phoneme. stunned rust & pink juxtaposed
call my bluff, i will nothing i exhaust them until, through
glassless barriers, belief stammers & darkens the bright dew

climbing aboard where shadows are longer, softer-edged no doubt & thoughts
more circuitous & maybe there is doubt about this fanatic dream in
unclotted air: the landscape rolls by. which of us is moving

i nothing i am the glass, the cargo train,
redundant experience on a cloying sphere.
i nothing i see vertigris, succulent puddles,
i nothing i not distance not empty, neither
raven nor snow nor broken space nor
blank sea nor jagged ink.
yes nothing unknown skin tantamount to
dirty rags in one remembered room
exhausting one poor person's
vision - just to keep warm in the exploded
view - of correct time. another story sinks horizons
one by one, shimmer of atmospheric eyes
in a blindfolded landscape.
these things are scraped & shaped
& those are not? will it become
clearer as we go north? no one-word
irritant in the bestiary: no cages,
no angles, only cascades of amulets
from the mackerel sky when i
nothing i re-unbelieve, haply
lost in desire forming
& unforming

landscape rolls by like a hackneyed koan, the slow dance of trees a
dull-witted parallax, defunct telephone poles cry tears into artificial
lakes. time to move on, planets

dear musical bestiary:
together, skin commits
a mere shallow text, blurted bones:
lung nickel scanned blimp
mud gland verbing dime.
i assemble myself
on the edge of a self-refuting expanse,
its home spilling neutral plastics in a half-light.
a person's name identifies an empty season,
places a cup & saucer on its answer key
of all possible inhalations,
the now-simplified subject at the
pleasure of a story's argument & integument
where a phenomenon is equal to a system of brain

for miles, winter has kissed the new jerusalem through its cunning teeth.
tender unfoldings whisper chiaroscuro cautions

for example, the way that prayer curves
or words awaken dust with the logic of water,
no one's flesh attaches to errors.
i nothing i walk on the outs
with surface, though experience is as shallow as
my flattened cortex. it's no use
flattering death, a risible sequence of closed
perspective, unopened weight. i nothing blind
wallow in persistent gaze, a flawed facade, provisional
impalement. i hollow muscle nothing question
my own release into buildings of deserted
knowledge. i never home i
am never home, unlike impatience with approximate
outlines. the desire to fill them churns unevenly:
part of the slow-burning mix. thou nothing
creature squirreling taste & love
for a winter whose low light can't do justice
to stored feasts, whose nothing juice can't assimilate
summer orchards of dim fruits

crystal rooftops in Home Sweet Homewood, Ill. snow being temporarily
horizontal, i.e., the viewer in relation to the moving window. constant
rocking elicits dreams about fucking. too many on-off things. one little
off-beat click or clack in each measure

the snow is an alphabet. the wires
going into houses are an alphabet.
commercial transactions of non-survival pixels
are an alphabet. one packs provisional snow into suitcases
& carries them to a greater democracy
of hummingbirds where land doesn't
land, stretching & running
with fences, overtime reflective high-rises
ending their black-&-white pinball march.
here in vocabulary. here's
the direction of thought. now
jump until the next crisis of letters.
sporadic lights in a quotidian
landscape, for example. i nothing i set nothing
in thread-thin phrase, or set fishes on the page,
alphabetical swarms floating over pliant roads

blind at herd's blood, at the content of an infelicitous name, wires &
waves connecting every nook & body. shapeshifter babies talk over tiny
shapeshifter pictures

i spirit haggle nothing in furtive consonants as
autobiographical malignancy banishes flux, an island
on which familiar volcanoes shudder
in the temporary middle of the night.
i begin the capture that eludes my grasp.
i nothing ride a fake horse,
grasp catastrophically at zeroed straws. i nothing
i feed into exact motes, hovering above stone margins.
i name of nothing flame of stave
stalk blank faith, double blessed game,
nothing fathomed. margin shores of nothing doing
nothing coiled signature of ghost petal, slippery nothing
knot. somewhere a person island confounds
practical rows of light along the shore. i nothing i settled
if not settled in dank algebraic mantles prearranged
amid surrenders of dust. i will nothing i
will hold onto rewards of lesser words
counted as nothing on the fringes. this is what
i will nothing feel like if i grave i read nothing
my stories in the light of nothing autumn suns,
bestiary nothing into shadows worn inside out my
thin-papered double-negative life, nothing safely
ensconced in the tender subject. nothing nothing nothing
as desire rises, supposedly targeting & symmetrical,
the expectations of a target nowhere reminiscent, nowhere
absolute encounter in such places as central orchids,
as a permitted tropical movie falls out the mind

mad silos . . . propane towns . . . destination as a mistake as if . . . an
unknown bird drowns on the empty page

full effect of history captured:
the taxpayers are all wrong about
the twin pressures of dust & roof,
a history of slipping outside alphabetical folds.
jolts uttered preserve the breaching flames
of tongue's tip on brittle floor.
a new element speeds toward matter
shattered by salivating logic.
light's hoax examined but not dismantled
within earshot of what must be said
somewhere on the troubled grid,
no choice in the ongoing counting
within ventricled air

parallel sunken tracks, river of splinters, jinx of sleep zealed to bits,
stash of wrinkled garments

i nothing a whale-toothed other
held in the spell of babbling boats
reaping pure profit of night grifters.
mud & lots of it under pressure of selfless air:
cacophonous jot, palpable varnish, stung blindness,
raggedy blot. at a critical braid in time
stars nothing solidify into scenery,
now complete. rows & rows
of corn & mystic snow,
idle zones of associated terminals:
up is on, down is off.
i am more & more probable nothing
before extant storefronts, trashed creek systems,
curtained zenith, as orange as what is triggered,
a blur of tree shadows in the strong season
cast onto a blundering shore
reminding me of another "own thing."
confabulated ruts get the factual stamp lest we unforget
secret smells of public weather
in the dissonant arms & legs of the brain,
which tell how to report from the bird-
sung snow where flowers grow cold
proven by trickery & the oversimplified promise
of an object-mutilating plot:
i nothing i, newly voiced, swaying on fashioned
tracks, misspoken & felt, for once
opt for rubble within seconds of topple




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