The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn

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СКАЧАТЬ to pluck

      a renegade bud or

      puckered potato already

      on the verge of rot.

      A toxic black walnut

      tree stands sentinel

      at the leaning gate,

      dropping its dark

      grenades into the field’s

      jumbled stalks. Two

      squirrels quarrel over

      which one should

      command this wasted

      circle first, the entire

      acre fat on my neglect.

THE FORCE OF COMPASSION

      Sit with things and listen long

      and the singing will begin.

      Turn your free fall into

      a voluntary act. The song

      shattered, every being

      takes its piece of the harmony.

      The well of the past is bottomless

      and in the walls the song climbs

      out of the nets and jewels of time,

      the infinite unraveling mingled

      with bitter intervals of radiance,

      well water, lotus heart, rising crane.

THE HOUSE OF DANCE AND FEATHERS

      You got to roll with it, or else you’ll roll

      under it, says the piano player, roiling

      the air with arpeggios. The genius is in

      the second line, the one entranced and

      in thrall to the drum, where the fierceness

      of the soil is made manifest, its black mass

      loosened by the rhythm of the water roots.

      If Heaven is the place where nothing ever

      happens, then the stomp and pomp takes

      place elsewhere. Horses fear bridges

      because of their binocular vision. Unable

      to see straight in front of them, their

      survival instincts have fashioned a 180

      degree panorama in their peripheral scope,

      with two realities constantly in play, like

      the whale heads hanging on either side

      of the Pequod’s stern, whom Melville

      named Kant and Locke; our perception

      is only narrowed when our brain feels

      threatened. In Antelope Canyon, on

      Navajo Land, Heaven is slotted in

      the sandstone, and gossamer beams

      of light compete with the waterfalls

      to frame a vision of life after death.

      The Crack and the Corkscrew spiral

      out of the layered earth tones like a

      pair of Dante’s hellish circles, where

      painters and mathematicians spar with

      sediment for the symmetrical spoils,

      though sometimes the occasional flash

      flood will claim a tourist or two.

      In Heaven, to whom does one confess?

      And when does Death show his face?

      Perhaps there the water is made of silk,

      and the substance washing around you

      is called Grace. Seven white coroner’s

      sheets covered seven unarmed black

      men, who were killed by white police

      this week in America, and each of the

      deceased’s mother or wife believed

      their beloved was in a Gucci stall being

      fitted for wings. Every policemen thinks,

      there but for the Grace of God go I.

      Does the Governor of Heaven care about

      the color of the murderers? Is there a

      great slide, shaped like a bell curve, that

      drops the unworthy straight into Hell?

      Or streets paved with gold, diamond

      Jacob’s Ladders, leading the freshly

      christened cherubs on escalators into

      the segregated first class seats?

      On Earth as it is in Heaven, says the

      solemn congregation, where the lion

      lives in harmony with the lamb.

      Awake for five straight days, eating

      speed and drinking tequila, Mickey

      Newbury swore to me that he’d

      seen Jesus, and how did he know?

      Had to be Him, said Mickey, He had

      on an eggshell robe with the letters JC

      monogrammed on the breast pocket.

      When 4-year-old Colton Burpo told his

      father, Pastor Todd, that he had visited

      Heaven while having his appendix

      removed, he had sat in JC’s lap and

      summoned СКАЧАТЬ