Matt Krane

That was a winter of fire alarms. Smoke set off the blare one afternoon in mid-February, shrieks bouncing through the halls of my small-town high school as we exited, half-costumed, onto the frozen grass. Our science-teacher-cum-set-designer had decided that burning bamboo poles for our South Pacific set was a good idea. The strobes flashing from the walls when the warning system smelled smoke told him otherwise.

                  down the sink : rushed water



funnels after fish entrails, or grease gives



a type of collapse 



              inward, frying in a pan



fennel-seasoned. An equation equates 



oil and flowers, fields and division. Descent



is a disintegration by parts. What is missing?



 



I want to peer down at myself from above



and point out algae. How my grandfather



took me to the pond 



    for the gutting of it—



one blink’s worth too much. Why isn’t there 



more inside? Why isn’t there more to bleed, 



protrude, be stripped? All these still stalks



 



come from somewhere. Fennel was a field,



was a marathon, was a death in a field 



under clouds of phosphate.



  I slice a fish



sideways and grasp at the inside. Now



things go quickly, death is its own mass



and caves in time toward the event, and



 



viewed from without,



each second slows to a whisper



                      never to cross



over. Here. Here seem all horizons 



to end the same, bundled up in one ribbon 



 



tucked between the teeth and tongue.

I hide in the family woods and

wait for it.

Brother and Sister,

Ask and Embla come



to the edge.

I was born from driftwood.

I made myself

a thrush—



the song is smoke over the fire now.

Aspens are charred limbs.

They are abstract.

Brother and Sister set this



I hold the veiny leaves

falling blackened to the dirt.

Impress them in my palm they come apart.

The trees contort



from heat, they

groan—the branches scribble furiously and

I am separated

in the burning. Plumes float over.



Now I recover form.

I walk the limbs and am forever forgetting

what was my name

Life or zest or Leaf or Lifprasir







what was my detail-soaked skin—

Not this

the convulsion didn’t save the other

half of things.



What was here

before they came through the unveiled sex of

the sky and left fire

for small things?



Ask and Embla,

Brother and Sister made

a perfect forest.

It is perfect. I remember my limb. 

as if eaten away 



beyond the storm



 



overwhelmingly



searing colors



 



beating back clouds 



fixed by light



 



cleaning wounds 



stroke deeply & clear



 



eddy of dark water 



today with cancer



the shroud lifts 



menacing brush



 



here a guest 



the season ends



 



pulled out of sight 



uncharacteristic



 



in water, silhouettes 



(tears, shriek, hush)



 



uncomposed



it doesn’t affect you



a canvas corner 



strokes against realism



 



appearance of blood 



that swan in the sky



 



a pupil’s bridges 



turning in wind



 



raise their oars 



a thick cocktail



 



scans came back 



you unravel

At the chunk of rock

              They moor their ship their only memory

It is noon the wind lies down

              On the warm deck

And they gather the lots made of bone

              Shuffle the playing cards

Chance arcs in by the mast

              In the sound of the collapsing cards

The captain will not play the game

              His daughter is different

Master of this place

              Of measurement and particle

He will not let her at the foot of the rock

              He would like to remain faithful to the instruments



Still the ship is moored

              The island is crumbling into the sea

When light goes down the waves come up

              Slip in under the netting

Watching through themselves

              Under the pulsing stars she convokes the crew

Voice a rich mezzo she explains her calculations

              Spilling over a train of papers in her hand

Crafted in ink with symmetric diagrams

              Glossing over the blurred waves

There will be no wind for days she says

              Only the lots will serve here

Only the bones the metacarpals

              Still retain a sense of direction

The crew members must nod taken by

              Her suite of equations her form her diction

The meeting is adjourned

              And the captain unknowing does not observe

Later in his daughter’s tent

              She hums keening music

She is hearing something else

              Which filters down through dusk



The sound of birds tutoring their young

              In the violet hew call

She is hearing rituals for pulling the sun

              Passed down through the blood and sound

And she fixes the bones of the lot

              Painting over unprotected cards

Shapes the many fingers of chance

              With the sign of her death

She will not be wrong she has dedicated everything

              To the density of water the statue of Archimedes the covenant with the dead

For the captain of the ship she will be

              Agamemnon’s love in the Aegean



When morning comes pastel-blue and vaulting

              She has already entered the fullness of it

Again the crew gathers but something is on their lips

              The captain reaches for his lots

Casts the bones up into the blue

              They hang suspended for a moment

Descend down into his fragile hands cupped

              He throws his shock to the waves

Seizes the cards from his oarsman

              Lays out the five symbols but they confirm it

His daughter will be left for the wind

              To appease nothing some statue in the Acropolis

Mixing her body with the rock

              The crew bursts into sound

Wind coming like white noise

              Tone clusters mechanical voices waves piling up

Spilling out from air

              Bones gaining heat

Turning white-hot radiating bodies

              Now the explosion comes

A small bomb shatters them

              Smoke hovers over

Plumes are what is left is

              Time for them in the frames of the sea

The captain’s daughter died here on this rock

              Has it been two thousand years for her