J. J. Blickstein
COCHINEAL FOR SCABS IN A PICKET or TWO LITTLE GIRLS
after a photograph of two little girls on roller skates wearing "Don't be a scab" sahses, 1910s-1920s. Photographer unknown. Nursery for fresh nips rhyme and wounds Möbius snitch they keep on a' comin' hard to stitch, patch wash with vinegar water down weak carmine and drain. Rock to the groin fist for cinch filament and glass snuff and strip that wired calm inside a bat like lightning- the trucks don't stop long Simple technology like outrage handing out elimination for roses peace by piece by piece little girls in skates donning sashes- short magic in knee socks imagine deep space as peaceful but lonely What was hunting back before mobs and sloganeers when meat was a deity akin to eating light or music? Two little chariots dressed in magpie and flinch a penny per Agriculture cultivates a man until there is too much time for counting accumulation and war Two little chariots as a neat as a cigar 2 for me, none for you "A fair shake" when galaxies collide taking all they can from labor: spiders, ashes, fashion and burn No scabs, bum nor general in the granary in a glass of water restless as a fortnight as backup for rain and wage by dog and night Little girls circling as satellites bicuspid as a crescent moon little warnings in the tooth for those seeking bread before give and take candy missives birthday candles for bread for roses pimping an idea small as it is bright a penny per
BLUES FOR A FEATHER
Finally, you realize that the moon isn't following you. It's just a shadow as a courtesy to bend into disappearances without symbolic agent. Sleep is where two lovers embrace inside of a bird, and their unity perfects flight where the bones merge with intent into a wonderful machine, and the night, being more relevant than articulation, cradles the sun for yolk as a vesper for origins. Blues at the crossroads where a man is torn apart from the inside, a member rendered for each direction, and yet it's not the fear of pain that is overwhelming but the indecision before dawn with nothing to embrace but bones and ashes where the seasons move at an unnatural speed when the mind is fatigued by the dark and incapable of surrender. You name your fingers after little ghosts with special abstract qualities like solicitude, negligence, speed, lust, mercy. A dog corpse at the feet is a music box playing a haunting tune at a fast tempo, until you pull your knife out of your pocket and sink it into the dirt to untangle the heart. You sing your own tune until you're covered in water and all the women you ever had sing back to you until the cold is impossible to feel. A little bird lands on the chest and barks at you until reverie becomes a traveler and you set out to live somewhere, restless, quelling the beggar at your throat for gravity and perfect pitch.
LUCKY
Rat springs from a corpse as a god with a fortune of little vices and gestures as small as rice. A dream made of gold is submersed in milk as a blessing. Rat dances on a pool of honey playing a little flute with a dirty song for the intellect to thread a needle with the body as a red prayer. Rat feeds on darkness with lost language and a blind image until death passes through as a shadow without its memory because there is too much color and celebration for it to be part of the economy. No place to hide, the body becomes an orchard to feed thy neighbors with a crown of desire and a feminine noun in a coup of tiny black seeds as wise as a lover. A private assassin sleeps for gravity when you steal the veil between lifetimes and drink that water as a mythological feat with an unlimited body capturing the primal echo in the fingertips to share with anything that wants it and spirals inward until it burns the sand right to where the bridge to the belly kneels. A fly floats as a satellite to blemish paradise.