Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as, The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, Infinity's Kitchen, and Jacket. Most recent collections include Sharpsburg, from Cy Gist Press, Blake's Tree, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press, Whole Cloth, from Avantacular Press, Red Power, from Quarter After Press, Kansoz, from Knives, Forks, and Spoons Press, Web Too, from Tonerworks, War, and After, from BlazeVOX [books], and Scorpions, from Unlikely Books.
***
1.
upon
he’d stepped out of a dream the other
sitting alone in the empty
classroom its high
windows sun-flooded the boy sees the
other suddenly quietly
there and
thinks “he’s stepped out of a dream or out of the light
itself”
you know who I am?
“yes the poet”
and you wish
to ask me what?
“about
your lines their vowels and numbers
about
their vengeances”
room upon room
dream upon dream
light upon light
poem upon poetry
what do you see hear?
“attention lucidity wrath in light”
let’s walk
out
so they did out onto the institution’s grounds and met there
hulkers calling the
boy faggot asking him who was his
faggot friend
mildly
the poet studied them
to know the darkness each would come to
and commit
darkness upon darkness
and
there was the girl with crow-black hair walking
now with one of them
darkness upon the dark
then
it was dark and fog
the boy
moved off
wishing he carried a tight bundle of sticks burning to light his way
*
but the poet had remained elsewhere in the fog-dark
he stood beside
a young tree in
which trussed up with ropes legs
arms pulled up
nearly vertical
he’d suspended another
man whom he burned here
now there with a
flaming bundle of sticks before he
gutted him this
other who had turned the poet’s wife into grain and then consumed her
poems upon poetry
upon vengeance
upon
darkness
upon fire
*** 2.
swimmers of the air
large flock
fifty or more though barely
visible
in mist those
Great Clackers their honk-song
piercing hearts
their form a flight-shuttle never without instruction their
high weft leaving ravens behind
yet there were those
her heart’s ease
on Ithaca at the
feet of the queen weaving unweaving
*
without instructions
putting up the borrowed six-man tent
honeymoon night
coming on obscenities
or
our rented Spanish car
driving through and in
Toledo thin
streets hemmed by walls high dark
though the swimmers of the air pass over
and
housed within his works
though not his View… reversing alcazar and cathedral spire
the city shone like a
precious
stone like
a jasper clear
as crystal
he challenged
perhaps even violated this:
istoria
or a didactic
model improving society via
classical ideals
geometry’s harmony
his angels
and
aspirants
*
we two on the bank of
the Delaware River looking
up you asked “do you feel that you’re somehow
thinning?” I said “yes”
*
Geb Keb old
god of the dead in
the earth with a
goose on his head
*
body knows first
then informs the soul-mind
goose best
interpreter of human scents tells those evil from those good
*
mentis alineatio
his thinned torqued
figures rising to
lumen gloria
angels and
human aspirants
*
he cackled being the Great Cackler in the place where he
was created he alone
he began to speak in the midst
of silence
he opened all eyes and
made them see
his cry
spread about when
there was no one else
he brought forth all things
he
caused
them to live
he made all men
understand the way
to go and their hearts came alive when they
saw him