Zimmer Pans My Chapbook

When I circumference I
nuts-and-bolts cerebral ornamentation, I
narrative, urged by mortality. Jarman: “Syntax
excavates experience.”Probably “surface
contours,” although I am not quite sure
what that means. Although I felt
some inadequacy, yes, I could trace

vague and occasionally “art.” I tried
consoled, tried discovery and sifting
archeology. I unfold
the mummy’s breast determined
to make immediate sense,
trails in cold snow. You might
follow, obscured by wind
and sun. You go on to initial
the grave: Skeletons of birds moving
upriver, the thinness of voice. The wreck
of gold. Okay, I can

mount the deliberate, the personal. The first lines
trackable, but what river? What lean
with history? Yes—nice--the starved
moon and the thinness (whose?) tonight, but
why border? What bridge why fragment? How
dream? Why baboons steel gold fish? 
Alas, I should be the last, “Half Life”
the middle. I assume I

as far as I can. Struck
by lightning and greatly, the poet
her own injuries (silk veils!), surviving the broken
staircase I won’t
drudge in my mind. I would like
to penetrate sadness, way around
to grief, reference knowledge
at arm’s length. In Wonderland
no meaning saves a world; see, I am being
hard on the craft
I do not. Her ilk painted
a remote corner: daunting

terrible world. Perhaps if they continue, they
will be doing. But I hope for something
else. Not all poets can strut like I
believe I can predict time will disappear
into aether. I ferret and preserve the
authentic of our age, chance
some distant day.


Published in American Letters & Commentary, 2006.