Bruce Beasley’s most recent books include Signs and Abominations (Wesleyan) and Lord Brain (Georgia, 2005). He teaches at Western Washington University.
As the gone-
translucent octopus jet-blasts into evasion, vanishing while its ink-sac spurts a cloud of defensive mucus & coagulant azure-black pigment, self-shaped octopus imago in ink, so the shark gnashes at that blobbed sepia phantom, [...]
Abundant deprivation, glossolalia of hail on windows, the splintered ice-crust of the roadside muck:I take the names of things that remain— stinkhorn rising over dead sweet basil, the roses' chokehold, still, on the frozen summerhouse. [...]
I know what we call it
Most of the time.
But I have my own song for it,
And sometimes, even today,
I call it beauty.
—James Wright,
"Beautiful Ohio"
I don't know why I live in Ohio,
where Stinking Creek
[...]
There are words
on the edges of things,
parasitic, hungry
for meaning—
How I want them: mourn
and extinguish,
exoskeleton
and wing. . . .
I hold out my hands, murmuring
"Lent" means spring, murmuring
cracked rocks on the creekbank, slimy
with m [...]
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