Her
Mouth, the Propeller
I embody the phone.
I live to hear it ring.
I remember you.
C'mon. Ring.
She came into town and it was late it was early.
In the cellar, the
propeller was a muttering, stuttering tongue.
The morning came out slow,
a fine time, a Van Gogh
to go up, sputtering up
in pastels and merlot.
C'mon. Ring.
The manic rise of a sun had won,
one-two, and she, three times a lady
bade me and made for me
to follow her down, a follower just behind,
into the cellar,
in the cellar where the
mother of this dust goes to die,
and the rats latch on to each other and die.
They clutch onto each other as brothers
and homage themselves in a bow to the figure,
the wax and glass thing she built in a vineyard,
when she had let it ferment, and placed it in link,
and drew its cork, and had a drink,
and dragged,
dragged
down
into the cellar.
The propeller was a sputtering, spattering gun.
The propeller went shuddering, chattering spun
along an axis, and I've been blind in one eye since birth,
I came blind in one eye since birth
where I was born to a planet made-over in
phones and wait, tones and baited
lines of late crime, and also time,
and ears, and tires, and drums of magwheels,
listening on with space, and then dragged,
dragged
down
into
the cellar.
The propeller was a shattering, shuttering Sun.
I know you. Please—
you make this telephone ring.
Make it,
make it,
please.