ditch,
the poetry that matters
Micheal Leong
Michael Leong was educated at Dartmouth College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Rutgers University. His poems have appeared in journals such as Bird Dog, jubilat, NFG Magazine, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, and Tin House. He is the author of a collection of poetry, e.s.p. (Silenced Press, forthcoming), and a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All (blazeVOX [books], 2009). He currently lives in New York City and can be found on-line at http://michaelleong.wordpress.com/.
The Signals
The signals… you know,
the ones that you sent me—
with what contagion did they fluoresce
in the fjords of my brain?
with what sutural inscription
with what curdled election
with what caulk
and suction
with what fulminating forms
of felined flexion ?
The signals, the ones you sent me—
in which crucible
did they achieve
their circumambient coagulation
their irrigated reticulation
their spasmodic swaths
of forked threnody ?
in which clotted chalice
in which
fallen
caldera
in which vent
in which faucet
in which streaming socket of possibility ?
The Signals (2)
I looked for you through the lattice,
you know, the one
criss-crossed with latency,
the ciliated one,
the not-even-dreamt-of one,
the one that kept coruscating…
…and when my monocle unmoored,
when my lorgnette went limp (and lassoed my wrists),
when my binoculars
branched
into a billion tributaries,
I still looked for you.
I looked for you
when my monocle returned
but with a crack
in which fell all
my earthly possessions.
I looked for you / you looked for me /
when we got lost
in thought’s
intractable arpeggiations,
when our rudders
were busy
reconfiguring,
when the incipient air
between us
was calving
…and so I imagined going...
up the fish-ladder,
around and a-
round the widow’s walk,
through the valves
and shutters,
the vowelled shudders,
through the effluvial flume
that shoots
phrases like “much-mooted mouth filling” and
“open-coil paper surplus” and
“pan-shaped not-soul”
that shoots
rumorous mutations and mutilations
that shoots
coiling
and re-
coiling
skeins of revulsion
that shoots
flow charts
that only approximate
the pained process,
the painted process
of the inscrutable pas de deux
through the churning collideoscope
through
the treacherous passage:
ea retch ous
ea retch ous
tre ache rous
ra etch erous
ach to err eus
ach to err eus
to research u
re a hurt ceos
r to sear cheu
e to char erus
trh a source e
tre scour a he
trace herous
r to reach eus
r a seer to chu
create horus
tre a ruse cho
to reach us er
rch tear eous
rea the crous
treacherous
ea retch ous
ea retch ous
tre ache rous
ra etch erous
ach to err eus
ach to err eus
re to ache r us
re chart eous
a route rches
ra steer chou
tre a course h
r to see a chru
star r echo eu
tre hear cous
a chorus tree
reach to us er
trea rouse ch
tre a rose chu
arouse retch
tr eros ache u
r to crease hu
re a shout cer
race to herus
trae echo us r
and so i imagined
and so i imagined
going across the surface
of the impossible meniscus,
over
over and beyond
to the awaited arrival
already riven
until my mouth becomes my tongue’s sarcophagus
i will insist
that we once lived beyond the sound barrier
that we often go from a solid to a gas
and back again
that marooned as we are on this interminable isthmus , this insane axis
even the silt
of our whispers can
mar the sea
that our story is thus inscribed
in the incunabula of the night :
ONCE UPON A TIME TIME WAS UPON US
TIME ENCLOSED
that “we are like the spider we weave our life
and then move along in it we are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream”
that when I said
you misheard me correctly :
that yes yes “in the net we inspire”
