English

Sand Wars was first
published in Flanders,
but as Van Bellingen
pointed out, " eggnog. "

A narrow girl sells purses made of reed.
Dead rabbits hang by feet, their red eyes dull,
while chickens crammed in cages peck their seed.

A vessel in Juan"s brain begins to bleed,
spreading into the fissures of his skull.
A narrow girl sells purses made of reed.

The madams in the district underfeed
hookers they line up for a spectacle
while chickens crammed in cages peck their seed.

A vendor buys his wares, then smokes some weed;
hookers they line up for a spectacle

It didn"t happen in that order —
the endless growl of what will turn out to be
miniature quad and trail bikes, carried along
the top of the valley and rumbling its contents:
small kids with helmets weighing more than their heads,
ragged on by parents with crossed arms and ambition
in their eyes: round and round the drone of fun.
A country pursuit. Tracy tells me a professor
of economics at a local city university
while praising capitalism says he will only
listen to opposition if it comes from one

Lichen glows in the moonlight
so fierce only cloud blocking
the moon brings relief. Then passed by,
recharged it leaps up off rocks

and suffocates — there is no route
through rocks without having to confront
its beseeching — it lights the way,
not the moon, and outdoes epithets

like phosphorescent, fluorescent, or florescent:
it smirks and smiles and lifts the corner
of its lips in hideous or blissful collusion,
and birds pipe an eternal dawn, never knowing

when to sleep or wake. They might

As we sipped and mingled,
regaled
with oldfangled
canapes and beguiled,
or entertained at least, by gargled
oldies, I disengaged
and angled
across grass tenderly groomed,
past where electric tiki torches gleamed,
and, alone, gazed,
now truly beguiled,
at my hosts" grand
expensive vista, mortgaged,
yes, and, yes, remortgaged.
A low gold
moon glowed
against a plush black sky gauzed,
even filigreed,
with stars. Gowned
in old-growth oaks glazed

He slid the stiff blade up to my ear:
Oh, fear,

this should have been thirst, a cheapening act.
But I lacked,

as usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold,
a billfold

wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt,
I felt

like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found
the drowned

body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy.
That boy.

1

We like to think
that the mind
controls the body.

We send the body on a mission.

We don"t feel the body,
but we receive conflicting reports.

The body is catching flak
or flies.

The body is sprouting grapefruit.

The body is under-
performing in heavy
trading.

2

Reception is spotty.

Someone " just like me "
is born
in the future
and I don"t feel a thing?

Like only goes so far.

I don"t own an exquisite way to move around in the night
— Doug Benezra

It occurs to me that,
when I die,
they might find the necklace
I dropped behind the bed
and wonder
how long it was there,
and whether I"d missed it.
But will they care
about my favorite color,
my long-range plans,
or my habit of searching myself
for signs of rust?

It is not so much that I miss you
as the remembering
which I suppose is a form of missing
except more positive,
like the time of the blackout
when fear was my first response
followed by love of the dark.

I knew something was wrong
the day I tried to pick up a
small piece of sunlight
and it slithered through my fingers,
not wanting to take shape.
Everything else stayed the same —
the chairs and the carpet
and all the corners
where the waiting continued.