“The night is a sentinel. / Much of your time has been occupied by creative games / Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you. / We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert,” John Ashbery
or one in the wild
as an old draft horse
into this foal odor
caused behavior
response of wood
finds his body wild
modern languishes
domestic coyotes live
in recycling of unknown birth
with one of wood
and one of behavior
equus ferus carrion
like an unbuilt russian roller coaster
mountained and developed to term
to sense thoroughbred markings
atomic breed shortly
follows the track
from anatomy to decay
coyotes komodo dragons
verticulated months endanger
dead flesh breeds bacteria
Source: Riedel, Charlie. Kentucky Derby. 5 May 2016.
Photograph. Associated Press. 5 May 2016.
“Syntax is never what you thought it was; just when you think you’ve got it down, it bolts out of the corral into the high chaparral. The job of poetry is not to get syntax back in the corral but to follow its wild journey into the unclaimed.”
– Charles Bernstein from Recalculating
What I’ve learned about long walks of course
Was taught by the whiskers of a reservation man
Lashing a horse
Sterile tracts of pale kentucky blue grey shale
Don’t take them
Or take them seldom by mail
Stretching out like a dying dog
between
The pickets and Queen Anne
For a loss
They can’t
Be beat
The beat
Across the lawn
The lawn along the limb
Where does nightfall end
And daybreak crown its gin?