site map

R  e   s   c   u   e   m   e Joyelle McSweeney

--returned like a debt to the anteroom. the lenses had finally flown away on their fingerwidths, but their jewels had fallen out into the hands of the near-blind maiden, in payment. in these a vision of horselegs, fractalling out from a myopic center. starburst of kicking hooves, anti-bleeding drug, one diving nag, that bullseye, the most expensive shower curtain the woolworth’s carried, and then its ring of mold, band of gold to beat the band in the anteroom where those hunchbacked roadies lugged their anvils. para ti, paramour. would you plow up this baby in the carpool lane? no. so. pack my polaroid, my gold bond, my petrified skin, i’m ready to be dug up as an artifact or a rock in the road, flung aside to form a second monument. to be surveyed later. me at my front steps at my inviolable door. as they donned their caryatid dress and marched out into the Apollo, the seats themselves screamed. baby where did our lungs go. adjust your mask before helping another. my little baby sister can do it with me. as a gazelle leaps from rock to rock describing an alternate mountain, so the thought flickered somewhat above their scalps in the afternoon, so the flame licked each forehead before settling in their ears. socks stuffed into pumps to heal that way, on struts, became fetlocks and champing heels. cotton weals combed out into lines. this would be late lust, potluck, fistful of sputniks whirling away like fireflies let loose, kickapoo stallion, someone singing in the next yard, now snipped together for a reel of wonders, for slick, debased perfection in the human line. even the gods spilling the punchdipper do you better, get it right the first time, or, steering the punch wrong, do you right the next. steering the runaway trap on the way to the campmeeting, the lane suddenly ripping away and the body itself providing the meeting place. mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, can’t you see that I’m