American Steel & Wire Co., Worcester, MA, Bearing Spring, before 1934. Steel. Courtesy of MoMA, Manhattan.
Into A Desert
“A good pagan god lives within us,” she said; she like
her counterparts, smelling of salts and spices,
following a horizontal wind that stiffens the eyes.
Would one night’s sleep so soon be over?
All these visitations in the dark; oh, friends do you see
her dappling the shore; she’s laid watch over you for
centuries.
Swirl that glass of wine, pull your thoughts from the
olive plate.
For those of you who tow the hard line, watch the
sleepy-eyed child, air out your lighthouses.
Only this ominous, whispering, three-eyed creation
might sail the air with you, might encourage your
instinct to speak its mind; or are you just water living
in a clock?
There are words only minnows know and in the early
morning at a quarter to five, when the palm frogs
bellow, they see eternity’s immobile double doors.
A good god behaves, of course.
Time follows.
Price of Sunday Morning
Even in the clouds,
along the telephone poles,
on the tin roofs of desolate beach shacks,
in the trash cans, the birds;
paradise an unwound clock—
a timeline without curve.
Swallows, dear creature,
are breaking up in hues.
What the Serpent Sows
An un-
Lettering
Of words.
A slow-
Falling
Snow.
The claws
Of ex-
Istence.
The air pow-
Dered in
Radiance.
A gaze that
Covers up
The darkness.
❂
Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, musician and artist. He has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His work has been published in The Nation, Ploughshares, Raritan, Colorado Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is publisher and editor of MadHat Press and publisher of New American Writing. His newest books are There Might Be a Moon or a Dog (Gazebo, Australia, 2022) and The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, forthcoming 2023).