JERRY #1

Jane Gregory

The Idea Endlessly Goes with the Place from Which It Came

The man spends the morning trying to point his finger

at his finger.                      He spends the afternoon assembling

his mind’s intention to render heads        

                                                                                             out of wax.  

The eyes of the head, when pierced,

go blind.  He meant for the image to have eyes.  

It helped to see a stone circle,

                                                            recumbent, survival

as collapse out the window                                 the range of field

the stones fall upon.   The revenant there in her veil, 

grass turning in her mouth.  

He makes her go through the kissing gate, 

towards the ladder                                           of pale wheat wood.      

Endlessly                                                           he goes with her.  

From the ladder she sees a starving army in the distance, 

each pointing beyond her.  Home

is the retention of his mind        

                                                                            so he takes her there with him, 

without warning through the door.  Behind the door,

more behind.                                                      Where the field is growing            

because he fears nothing                                  he wants to grow something else.  

If there could be seeds                                       they would be in his fist.  

All day of his fingers he makes stone fists. 

Advanced Praise for the B.F. Poems

Epigraph: [the brackets are silent]

To shun had something to do with shade, with sun

Once there was the shadow of the sun 

itself then eclipsed

That there was experience                                                               [that there]

In the morning
I am so tired, you are, all the
lines they waver, the white tile, 
the corners that hold the door, 
as if to call distortion restorative, 
as proof, 
just look

Or be[ware] where the body becomes:                  

    O, dear,

Do you think I threaten to hold your hand? That you are holding my hand’s shadow as you read, do you think it’s getting on your face? 

                                                                                          Yours,

I was embodied next I was embalmed
and kept & kept & kept & kept that
digging up in the dark, the dull hurt, 

                                                                                                            [heart?     ‘ea’vs.‘u’
                                                                                                            a duel, or     b‘eau’ty?] 

the dial that goes back from duet
forth to duel You
cry art ic u late a yawn
be leave there be yond
be yonder, would you? 

Would you give up your research? 

For example, 

They knew diseases carry that they are carried. ‘That they are carried’ was the first recorded declension. Literally verbs were necessary for the discovery of gravity. That the verb ‘was’ was no discovery at all is a joke. 

And for example, 

The first recorded visual image of the ouroboros is in an illustrative dictionary, within the portrait of a young, androgynous figure, it takes the place of the mouth, elaborating the open mouth. The entry serves to define the characteristic of muteness, the first one who neither spoke nor tried. 

Ah, my enemies, 

my enemies pity me because they are still my enemies [?]

In the dark: s, i, n, g. 

Do it to the body that dug up the
pyrrhic, knew only that after the fire,
the unred'ning

O, dear,                                                                                                  [O, boy [Oh, my]]

I had one thing to begin
with but I forgot my body where it
must have been and didn't begin
there, I cannot feel any sense
and nerves are what stretch out,
skeleton to keep us from bundling
ourselves as the tumbleweed
unravels

The fire unravels (vanity ambulance banner

is in there, Faith, the new matter I’ve made, am made to inhale

I am the heft I am                                 professional)                                 [confess, pronoun, undress]

Restore, distort, should say
so gone beyond, it unbecame
Nothing to do with it
there was
Or if what you put on
becomes you                                                                                        [is very becoming]

then fear
is where you expect it to be

If it is still the morning the fire made become                                           [became]
Removed in the dark after it

and under the door
is sweeping some swell air,
swell of air as an offering to free
and breathe if you want to,
strike the name from the title,
if you want to be free, own