f u g u e   s t a t e   p r e s s
p.o. box 80, cooper station
new york, ny 10276
212-673-7922
208-693-6152 fax



A ROMANCE

W.B. Keckler

from Ants Dissolve in Moonlight

Suffering is allowed. Synthetically met,
seen rapid as glass or a painted sea-scene
of the pure blush. Like wine on windowsills,
the ruffled breeze and short-legged dogs go by.
Below as Flemish. Made worth who wroth medium.
Now we march in cool favor of alien winds
that bring the past in short pollen waves
across the glimmering floor. Not a stare
for stars as these. You are worshipped
in someone else's kitchen. A pentacle
with flowers of red, pink, or white
means someone else admires the static
once in that other room. This is a paean
to contractors. They know where white
lies, on vacant beaches. A single
towel there at afternoon. Structure
walks bilaterally. Off.

Too cool to clap, so they snap. Know
what I mean? Pensive decadents on
frescoes. We see them come and go.
It's not a pretty picture. Some are tame
and some are shallow. Who imagined waking
up with breasts. What had been whited-out
returned to the canvas, she saw upon awakening.
Crossing the chambers, following the smell
of coffee. And a pretty bird dangling fire
over the polished wood of the dining room
table. A complete realization is wings
or years away. You know what I mean,
but refuse to see the substance of my argument
because it's what gets underfoot. Your
sandals called huaraches. Hocus-Pocus
Mayan. You lie. And a late moon. Over
crystal tents where we lingered. To go
into all that again. Shells of tigered
purple. Nautilus. Inks housing projects.
You went fluid. No point is more oppressive
than yes. Another bird.

Never you mind. Composition is belladonna.
Wheels face indigo sea. Moist air yields
presence. Syllabic children run down there
but railings partition cerulean in mute verticals.
Who called him a name of death. The likelihood
that rain would alter sham forms, grasses
that hissed there. We called a mineral district
tonal. A few thousand mental images in an hour,
then despair. Returning. Can we substitute for
the past? Xeroxial wanderings and layers of
superimposition. Collages, dreams. Periods.
The veil loosens and spreads under water. You
say it is an argument which counters stone,
our house, our elbows planted in the sand, akimbo.
A thing does not attain anything. Qualities
simply come off as soaked skins. The way
a child's dinosaur unfolds in a glass.
Pretty refracted color.

And then there were none. Limp plural
we stroked in orange reflector skin.
Samurai crab-shell and who took out his penis.
Left in fractals of reality. They shimmered,
yes, that much is true, but how can we repeat
a story which is so disappearing. It's like
stars stuck all over your fingertips. And then
there were several. Realty repairs. Fluorescence.
Fragments. Biblical fragrance all through her
carpeted upstairs. Where he followed the sound
of her violin, shadows drenching the stairs,
awkward muse of grains in the folds of his skin.
What it means to be nude. Here. Each dry tick
of the clock in the salon downstairs scratched
his ideals. She was rocking an eye in a chair.
The way it looked, because askew. And a tiny
window behind her: a perfect square. Or so it
registered. But who knows. He wonders why
live roses. Over dusky sandalwood. Then
it slides open like a drawer.
Eros.

Botching it what you learn quickest. This too
not even a complete turn but a former world
well-done. Fantastic representation left to it.
Up in the air. Isn't that what they said? So.
A fictive insect imago dissected white. Glitters
on the kitchen table, salt spilled and rituals
of superstition throwing bits over a shoulder.

Or tucking one under your arm to fuck later. Does
it hurt? Varieties of the straight she copied
in geometric emulation. Blowing all this off later.
Maybe there won't be such excess, such waste.
Isn't that what the glowing white lines across
the top say to you? Prodigal tides. Spume.
And hair blowing over the frilly edges of her
calico. Insect chirr from where water seeped
into superheated stone. Imagined crickets.
Home under stone. Commas on your tongue
all that bright day. Blowing.
Him.

Dressing volts. An appreciation of spines she
left there. Strewn across the several landings,
intimate interiors. A long tongue slashing dark
there in fearsome humor. Then the phone rang
for years. Are you obliged to mount in top
positions? Don't be so honored or else they
might want you to stay. Buzz to get inside.
Leave letters cold outside. Next to hedges.
Bird nest there, symbolic. The knife's edge
is so common on heavy seas. Endless periodicity
we call the bourgeois charm of decor. Do you
believe all that? We crossed deep-bowled hills
and left our words there. Echolalia of desire.
Banged between rocks, boomed cries shaking
canyons and zippers down. Birds, foxes
poised in listening. Inexplicable cloud forms
under his brow. She licked that salt.
Some passage in a Puritan book.
She thought this is the ground.

He was standing there holding something.
Looked to her like old parchment. But they were
snake-skins. Limp. Burning. He smiled. And
so she remembers him in leaning grasses and not
a city near to compare. Something about scale
in the picture she retains. Needs to hang
on an intimate wall. Masturbating October.
Won't get to the milk. Something about the way
it cozens you. Quite an insincere phone call,
intrusion. Snouted pushing at her dress hem.
Smiling. Even holding wine glasses missing
the bristles. Just get to the children. She
thinks. Get to the kitchen. The coffin.
Get it over with. Incomplete penetralia.
Wings. Pigments. Canvases left.
Turned to aeons.

Hanging notes on his door. A line to
a lure or look. Blazing stare over the lake
and digital watch dropped into weeds. Laughing
at his pissing arc. Sleepy in places of nature
you are sure are ancient leaks. Or a cave where
the dark invited but you didn't go. Left a sweater
there. How it must have gathered two falls into
its breast, two winters. Eaten fibers. Indian
ghosts. Inertia in sweet profiles. Apple trees.
Thinking in schemata called vaguely logic. But
more like vestiges that glow at the edges. An egg
halo in still life. And sweeping your hair back
in a gesture of nonchalance. Those antlers in your
yard just compost now. Adjust the moss in its
pristine vase. Bonsai words. Trained to grow
in contentment. Void covered with petals.
Pretty pink ones.
Dappled the dark.

The bias in place. Balls against vertebrae. Kiss.
We float in a broth. Mood amplification and legs
left out in full view of windows. Neighbors nod.
Pretty mahogany color of horses that ran there
in rains along rails. You driving out. Leaving
it. Ridden to luminescence. Lugged. Cutting
out words from letters. Planktonic forms of
shadows over your wings which closed over your
breasts. Saying you weren't cheap. Were invaluable.
Stroking blossoms, as if they had neurons. He
liked to watch. His cologne behind your knees.
Why do they use the word "bury?" It makes it
sound so mortal. Sweaty swirling of his tongue
fizzing under there. It was muffling voice,
muting days belled blue this way, over you.
Impressionist swaying seen through windows.
Detection meant the person was wholly visible
behind the law. Its fissures. Cracks in the
domestic edifice. Which meant they were coming
apart, coming together. Unsettling.
Benumbing. Scumbling words in crevices
of eyed void.

Next-door oxidation. Pinch it. Go sell.
All pungent living, nodes of drama. Cell lit.
Continue nixing settlements which burn away.
Left with a fossil of the real? Outdistance
other old films. Watching black and white
streets with rain. Where characters settle
in on velvet cushions. That's the forties
for you. Better bid on paper outcomes. Letters
to follow. Retractions. The main structure
(as you can see) is oarless. Doesn't mean
it's any less. Ferns press white patterns
into stone and somehow it's enough. Aeons
when you weren't here with these troubles.
So you should be setting off. Face windows.
Where the light changes to extreme limits
of gaseous color. As if it were Jupiter and
the Great Red Spot a storm from Shakespeare's
time almost run its course, finally. So now
you turn in. Into the chamber with its white
woodworking of ceiling. Interesting shadows.
A glove of no consequence. Eros turned
inside-out. Edgeless.
Inking still.

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