H IS THE LETTER OF THE DOOR
No way rises like rags wrung on a porous street
The weather in space is reap
A field afield island like in insular ardor
I mean we’re that porous street
We’re history
The shape of capacity where discretion doesn’t exist
Direction curls
H would break out a dish at the first sign of precipitation and announce
that we were not alone in our bodies
Cirrus are you asking if history has a subconscious?
Clouds and some other wild animals share a curl
It was raining
It was discounting
Liberation shied like a horse in each of its fallow shadows and hid haunches
The victims are anonymous as moss yes
But their anonymity renders the atmosphere legible
It’s their insurgency
At 9 I
My face is impossible
In the ragged corners of streets the imminent ring ebbs patiently
A contemptuous porcelain yawn reserves its rain
A dream is a patience
/
a version of Popa
aura guttural gavel April
along fertile pavements
dust collects the spiraled objects
A dream came to me
I would get on a horse and throw dust in my eyes
and the horse would go to your door
Imagine if we put everything we wrote into practice
The weather would be out
The ledger sky and all the sheet thirties
Thereafterfeather
Abruption would pass into intermittence
Abseiling into abeyance
We would mistake this room for our perception of what it makes
/
a version of Popa
H had to be told to die they say the ants ate her
or she dreamt that it would get dark
and it got dark since she filled the house with ants
their lost heads said her heavenly reticulations
with their human fingerprints
No way reses like rain rags on a porous street
Went to see street
Then the horse at court
After lunch again with the horse
Back home I wrote H
Went up the hill
Between “I dreamt” and “a dream came to me” a mysterious table like a door
Adorno dreamt of a restaurant that served Yugoslav food
Its ebbing white tablecloths
Without a single customer
H said it would be ridiculous to eat all because of an air raid
They came to a manhole
H said it would be much safer there than in the restaurant
Always a marvel
Aloe gravel
Even the value of a pin
Without hands and without law
A lace end
H says some islands over their highest point have a table on top
/
a version of Popa
the ways are on fire we cut along their zero
so that we too can stand up
have you grown so much playing on my embers?
cut across the zero let’s rip our hands too
are you ready to soar to the source of my ardor?
Rain rings from the rags like bells on a porous res
I headed safely down the veined street that I know
All without news
I anchored toward things like that and I was passed
After having
the eaten
The bowls of that
people
H says that the rains must do this
/
a version of Popa
do you still keep my ardor? you left us stale cake
ash cake did you surge
on the letter of my door? our hands ate your cake
as we broke them
It was getting dark is like the bowls of people mossing
H says if there’s warmth it ebbs from things in spite
Ardor isn’t the only infinitely halved thing in us
Snowing is just light zero enacts
The objective of devastation is the opposite of vastness
The identity of polarity depends on the scorn of a rag
for anything that stands in the way of its suggestiveness
It’s true that any point on the rag can be superimposed on any other
It’s also true
Rains ants
After I turned the street there was a heroic exit wound
The corners live
Nothing by halves
They are the ragged ones
that scream the clarity of confrontation
when the street is haggard with ash and cake
They ring in pairs
Minute ants enter them sweetly sleepily barely willing
and fall cordite high from the hour
But you should not be ashamed of dying
It turns out to be a dish of nutritious snow
A cirrus uncurled from us the color of money
We came to surfaces and we drank them
We were trying to be transparent
H says my bed is made
Here is its ring finger
Sit on it
Maxwell Gontarek has poems out or forthcoming in La Lancha, Coma, Lana Turner, Volt, Tagvverk, Noir Sauna, and elsewhere. Co-translations with Léa Fougerolle into/from French can be found in verseant. His chapbook, H Is the Letter of the Door, is forthcoming from above/ground press and his pamphlet, A Perfect Donkey, is forthcoming from Creative Writing Department. He has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Belgrade, Langres, and Lafayette, Louisiana.