The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn

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СКАЧАТЬ Writer’s Block

       Running with the Bulls

       Ceremony

       Dear Reader

       Houdini and the Dead Letter Office

       Le Papillon

       Death Trek

       Building a Circus on the Sound of Wings

       The Mountain That Eats Men

       Antietam

       Coffin Not Included

       The Silver Surfer

THE SKIN OF MEANING

       Speech is not dirty silence

       Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier.

      —Wallace Stevens

      The Creations of Sound

ETYMOLOGIES

THE SKIN OF MEANING

      He was late to the party and without directions,

      though his invitation was secure, and his instincts

      keenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we are

      waiting to see if the fates will hear our ode to joy,

      we are given the sound of a man losing everything;

      this is the hissing of his agitation, the sound of his

      broken heart as it is given and fills with shards,

      a piece of stone in an overgrown garden, a stiff,

      bitter, life-long secrecy tipping over a robust

      single indiscretion and no one is witness to the

      villain, shaved to a shadow in that moment,

      letting the sail of his love loose in a ripping wind

      and that lost direction reducing his reflection to

      a splinter as he spends his summer cutting down

      the grass which grows right back and when the

      colder weather comes to drive him down he trims

      the fat of his summer words and their loose darkness

      swims round his leather chair, the garden vines

      emptied of tone, their edges’ innuendo snarling,

      the hidden realities so carefully furrowed in shy

      smiles and feigned deference which fasten his

      fading future, slowly shot through with the wrinkles

      of original meaning that he has never outgrown.

WHY PLUTO IS NO LONGER A PLANET

       for Alan Moore

      Of course, my belief

      in culture is a sham.

      I’m mining this shaft,

      nourished on red velvet cake

      and scrubbing the live walls

      with a ShamWow that

      I squeeze for emeralds

      like a wizard on holiday.

      Don’t ask me to explain.

      It would only force you

      to turn on a television.

      There is an outcropping,

      a bitter pill hanging onto

      the cliff of the universe

      like an old icy tooth.

      It tastes of burlesque and

      Aqua Velva, soft shoe

      routines and bent spoons, went

      the way of the Andromeda Strain.

      Imagine an unnamed finger

      grew out of the heel

      of your hand and froze there.

ET IN ARCADIA EGO

      When the trees bow

      and bushes curtsy, as

      the silk wind brushes

      through my bramble-

      cluttered garden, the

      claws of the field mice

      and piston-powered

      rabbits scramble the

      unbroken dirt, the

      untended roses groan

      under the weight of

      their thorns, the

      untethered tomato vines

      sprawl and dump their

      fire-red loads among

      the robust weeds.

      At one corner, Japanese

      hornets have assembled

      a gray colony the size

      of a watermelon and

      ward off semi-serious

      excursions СКАЧАТЬ