Sample Poems from Vespers

enticer

...and you did owe a kind of need

there & then

to follow ideas of overflow

merging

in dumb patrol

fiery & shabby somewhere

in the eastside – early morning –

it’s like you were young

or about to be no more or

cut by

a harpooningtype line alternately

racking & thrilled

straining & iris-ey

in bitter of deepshadow ocean

its vehemence felt

like a massage gone wrong

the statement –

“I need to be near water”

and the response of yes I do too [gesturing]

this, this, is somewhat water

hunger

.... because it went without saying

the weather is changing

quietly

absolutely it

must certainly

give us pause

[productive of pain to our weathering feelings]

& it went without saying

you feel out of place

as things storm

other lives we sincere are dearer than our own maybe

look: vital of rains, vital

animadversions of some note

is it not raining?

the burnlike sidewalk, slash-like

via the miasmic fall

gorgeous refract over the music school / I heard

my local 7-11 was the first ever

place for a séance

so glad of this fore-dream, asking

for cigarettes & matches to

embitter sparkily in

steam of park steps, a hazelight

bold, misled

genus (i)

surreptitiously, I’m sure

you wait for the footfall / aware that

he’s about to say “light a fire” / or say

“you’ve got ten minutes” / but then his phone

starts noise-ing, and the brackets of time contract

expand / concertina in the wake of what seems to be want

or your imagining of that want, at least

It’s me on the line, by the way / I live

in the space between imagined bruise and Pascaline toil

I’m across town, way past the dairy

that is in fact a camp for dying animals / we see the same sunsets

when I visit your home, I do not drive myself

blindsided

yes, that's right

“flat” I see, then think “distance, near, far, flat”

meantime: divestiture

rough weather out there, inside

the diamondbespatched pelvis the absolute

edge of it, the glimpse of lingerie

appeal, its scope & progress / oh an eye is as good as –

distance no object, no

a dog barks elsewhere, for example

or that circumferent weird paper cut

or your nerve root starts up

a horrendous clamor, a

process of re-living

or re-version

an echo

of the selfabbreviating thing done

(in fact, do what you like forever)

any eye is good

if you keep your distance

trespassing inwards

what about the mind, though

a mind

in the manner of a square inch

covert symptom a refuge, much

time for the lonely such

an interesting condition

waiting for the mail its lace & faux satin giftings

wait, did the divestiture continue, my nearest?

compline

bright silent instant

a mini-epidemic of close time

time for enclosure where

look! the fire has burnt out

from panic and I must understand I

want to understand

whispering something via libitum

forte, animato, ritirando; sound

half-opening, then closing

probable yet throwaway

heretofore, heretoafter & middle

umbering & wishful

a cathedral sound on mute

vertiginous stone screaming to sky

why does the grate seem

so unalterable, where

is fire at the hour of regrets?

I enter the actual present instead

here it says hush, here

it says hush, here’s

my absolute wits’ end s-

end send send

oxen

not so ethereal are we

in our confraternity

all the bloodying people

all that fellowship doing

its level best

the Capricorn eclipse tonite for

example, the script

audio-oriented, hi, with

some devouring at both ends

guess what else, the light-

bridle of screen

leading you too into

these gross nightletters

this vespers, husssh

Jane Lewty is the author of two collections of poetry: Bravura Cool (1913 Press), and In One Form To Find Another (Cleveland State University Press). She lives and works in Baltimore and Amsterdam.