by Stephen Collis

            tuning
this stray moment
                rainy day

      locked round roots

             flooding from moon and stars
                                                  continuous stream

             chthonic

                            cemetery walk dreaming

                                               animals

          in and out of shadows

             along the edge of wood
                        or down through valley

           holes carved revealing cold constellations
                       arrows that are arias (areas) of light

shot through to the breathing blood
            the music
                                   run through to bone

            in arteries / images

it contains in itself all the middles of things

                        and we drink from a fountain of fire

            as there only is soil
                       because living things have died

anima
              animals
inhabiting our arteries

I touch you shaking
            fist of hair / animal smell
                        you open your

hand — a light there
              heat / you say
                        it’s the first real idea anyone ever had

    word / image
             tool to dig with — what — I ask
                       harmony you say / biting my shoulder

                                  you never sleep in the same self twice
and who says what communicates
                        through feedback of changes

in the alley light fixtures
            smashed a
                       tattered Aeschylus falling out the open window

tissue within tissue
           sum total of animals for the holocaust
                      bulls rams lambs and kids

      are numbers
           what about a white she–bear?
                           repeating itself in incessant circles which aren’t circles
           the difference which is used as a new input

many of us camped along the shore
                                   the water’s own pulses

                                   yes / we are poets / but it’s not our fault

             compost or

I sensed I must work not with my abilities
            but with my inabilities — not with what I clearly thought
                        but with what I could not think clearly

by Stephen Collis

My first ever
poetry reading was
Al Purdy the
deep sea cave
of his voice
sunk and clogged
by the surf
I could barely
make him out
so many men
drowned there I
wonder how women
rose audible above
flotsam sea wrack
and ruin of
his submerged croak

//

And then I
see the process
my only consistency
my inconsistency to
live outside the
law you have
to be honest
abandon all plans
who enter here
this compost will
feed no fecund
future with its
sweet decay back
of the earth
shore line crumbling
dry sea caves
rising waters swamp
we see no
other earth no
plan at all
only scorched pages
walked away from
and the words
kill the brutes
now tell me
guys please who
are the brutes?

//

In the end
It’s only a poem
about planning to write
a poem
I get up
everyone is asleep
I read from Culley or
Wolsak or Eng
head out walking
my narrow line
to the sea
recursive feedback loop
consider what birds
there are touch foxtails
the word gloaming
when are we
in time and aesthetics?
Modernists come home
to roost in our
fearful asymmetry
put a record on
listen to the fine grained static
what bird is that?
small snub dollop in the brush
red–eyed vireo or marsh wren
unbearable sweetness of late July
taste the berries and note
only days until the first pie

by Conyer Clayton

Earth lives loud, with groaning
plates and thunder. It lies still with a simmering
temper. Deep breath, deep
breath, timely eruption, moving boundaries.
I speak faster —
I have authority. I rumble —
an intimidation. The waves
slap our skin.

*

That time we walked in the rain with a bottle of wine, but
how I got cold after an hour and missed the chance to
kiss you under a tree, is

the constancy of desire, repeated chiming
of clocks. Truth only in tongues.
A robin with a broken wing.
Dead bird on the sidewalk.
Glass — an unexpected warrant.

Death is a voice on the phone.
You didn’t say hi the same way, you took
such a strange breath.

by Conyer Clayton

It was my wedding anniversary but I forgot  / trailed into a day that’s not / I glued the pieces       of a broken necklace back together / I only wear jewelry I got before him, or
after / certain objects re–become and       un–generate / dry
rocks crumble themselves on a bookshelf  /  sometimes the
pieces are worth keeping sometimes they fit back together perfectly and you don’t even get your fingers stuck together in the process  /  but more often

a rock reminds you of the ways you distort yourself   /  glacial
silt from Iceland  /  a smooth meditative
stone stripped from a gully on the coast of Scotland
a shell that was too fragile for a chain   /  It would’ve worn
through the middle
most of them
I can’t remember — but

symbols matter              /              The whole
world matters                           gravel reforms

seamlessly