David Wallace

**Aria (I)**



**

**



If I were to drown myself in reckless beauty and make my wings creased lips parting,



 



I would hover in sibilance behind you,



my brother making a list of all instruments:



 



our faces are mechanical copies, yours only younger



 



and you make a grid with a pencil while I whistle



a jazz song from the 30s (I never knew the words)



 



and the light here is like the movies,



defining you with shadows



 



and staining you deep irreparable colors:



the way you’ve let yourself look is a pleasure



 



from which you can never return.



Your mind is perhaps like the movie projector,



 



always behind my head, always humming discretely,



and a pyramid of light arrives from that uncharted point



 



and tames the curling smoke with its certainty:



or perhaps your mind is not like that at all.



 



Doubtless it is a world of mechanisms nesting inside one another,



and a sentence standing for love is hurtling somewhere unknown,



 



but you go on cataloging the trusses and circuits,



and I go on whistling.



 



As you describe your count as the span of a cracked idea



you begin to shade yourself into darkness,



 



and I have already forgotten how I began,



that I promised you a ravaged image to ease your burdens:



 



and this chore blooms as the notes of a distant death passing,



a choir’s light stretching out to the vanishing point to break.



 



 



**Aria (II)**



 



If I were to forget that god is not a pulley once more,



(and where weariness has thrown me I cannot say)



 



then you could be buried in the frost.



I cannot bear for us to remain in heaven and on earth.



 



Because I have stopped severing my body from the mirror



to rise like a cloud of heat that distorts



 



only enough to reveal its presence,



I am standing halfway up the ladder, helpless.



 



If you have a contract with me,



forget it: I have perforated myself,



 



exhausted as the nights I used to cut through



strolling through the city where everything is designed for children.



 



But if you must pursue me,



I sleep in the woods outside town, waiting for summer to empty to autumn



 



and the community pool to empty out its bodies



and return to the self-love of its own stillness.



 



Gravity severs us from the forgotten



and until we knot our arteries, making one map,



 



we will have to be patient.



While we are in flux we cannot be located.



 



Climbing the panels of corrugated glass,



nothing is made for your safety



but I am keeping watch,



 



and for beauty I cannot drop like granite wrapped in sackcloth,



tied to the corpse that whispered to me the secret of freedom



 



like the Count of Monte Cristo, whose resolution meant nothing,



into the odorless green of the Mediterranean.

If my skull were a circle of light



I would use it unfairly.



 



After you were mesmerized



I would place my tattoo,



 



and setting you down, I’d



read you what I am reading



 



until you spoke it with me.



Next, I’d take a long walk



 



as the tides bring in the next



waves of damaged fish woven in glowing polyps.



 



To erase the record



of any potential transaction



 



I would make myself into a cherub



and install myself back



 



into the painting from which



I think I arrived most recently.



 



My book, which is the only one



with much in it worth reading



 



for your sake, doesn’t germinate



in your abdomen. Don’t get excited.



 



I’m the last cycle



of a perpetual murmur,



 



and my reasons are byzantine.



These dealings in high wind,



 



they break on the high rocks,



and I couldn’t replace them if I tried.

**The Snare (I)**



 



Please shut up. When I emerge wild,



the golden lake over my shoulder,



I will take into account the promise



you entangled me in.



 



1.



Similar to the negative torso



holding up the tree roots



I ask you to be gentle.



 



Everything will wobble



otherwise               When you’re not here



 



something crawls into the hole



and doesn’t think.



 



Patience is expendable.



Go deeper with me.



Break any final symmetry.



 



2.



I think this body is an instrument.



 



I grow like a graft.



It might be useless



to try to place



what stucco home



sprung me fully formed.



How often I thought



of my network of parts.



And I thought of yours.



 



Wheeling we get married



and I use my new mechanisms.



 



 



**The Snare (II)**



 



How do we know



 



how to send the codes from one end



to the other of the last sunken terminal?



 



If I were to lie down and go to pieces



I could imitate the echo in the marl.



 



***



 



A lord’s hand made me whole again,



my corpse the fledgling map of the new world.



 



A lord smiles like a turning wing



and hovers over noon churning.



 



All the parts were plain to see, the parish,



the barnyards, veins and ligatures.



 



They cover me with hay



until I am gone.



 



These locusts buried in the riverbank. They hatch 



and fly further. They cluster with force,



they eddy and course into my yawn.