Thursday, February 16, 2017

MATVEI YANKELEVICH ~












Enter the world,
a species already sufficiently inured to tragedy

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS, "The Tragedy of Waste"



XVIII


A new world springs up where the old world

nearly leaves off. The pawpaws are cut back

to reveal a field of maize, a comfort of crows'

grainy call, tongues that click. Paddles

beat the heavy ribs of arched sculls. At

a yellow crossroad you decide to make

a left and what happens after is history or

just a job to hiss and spit at. A racket

or a lever, a level and a rule. Sweat stains

the page of oriented labor, no longer

disappearing in the dirt of tilled rows.




XIX


The comfort of an arm, a screen,

a calendar, a folding chair. A moon

fir for a king, a level of comfort

driven down by rising

barrel prices. To say there is

no hope for us but in meaning

and nonetheless, somehow

what replaces a banal pub

on the corner is more

generic even. Everywhere

things getting it right. You

walk by, smell the motivation.




XX


A boat. A moving sale.

A party undisturbed

by invitations. A mislaid

vocab.  Price tags in the wind.

Surveyor bending to the scope.

Yellow reeds looking to forms

of potential thought. A cool

breeze through a competitive

model. The point of a dagger

missing, cut off by a framing

device made between wood

and linen. You could say

outside, or keep quiet.




XXI


In the conversion, a world comes to light

but not the world, actually. Or so you

might think. Or actually, in order that

you might think it. In order that that

world be perceived it must convert.

Or else who knows what the fuck is it?

Some kind of universe we're up against?

Worse: You take it on your own terms

even when you say you're taking it on

its own terms. In the lovely world over

there are some unfamiliar terms. Maybe

they're in your stomach, a world you can't

identify with even as it turns inside you.




XXII


The world flows through — rather

in that world everything flows together:

a common world. The chimney in disuse.

The smokestack — bricks and vines:

an image of industry as natural, inevitable,

primary. When it comes to

allegiances told through the hues

and heraldry of robes of boiled silk

no matter how. . .they speak

of fall foliage. Shrub oak take

a vow the color of rust. Crickets

beat the earth outside — the typing

sings of lower desires, that prices

should remain pieces

until the picture of a world emerges

of its own accord from music.


————————————

M A T V E I     Y A N K E L E V I C H

Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt
BLACK SQUARE EDITIONS 2015