Alexandria Peary
Instant Transmission of Knowledge
In 1982,
Wolf Man Jack
counted down “greatest hits”
from 40, 40 Solid Gold
puddles at the Top of the Charts
from the alarm-clock radio,
the sound of the dryer shuffling
for Saturday laundry
while wolf spiders
rode on the top of my head
though no one told me
as I went to my Psycho shower scene,
a pre-teen.
In Amherst, MASS,
I had a pet leaf
called Called Back
that followed me everywhere
a red asterisk on October sky
The angora bush
of loneliness stood on the porch
of the apartment complex
ringing the doorbell,
the fraternity next door got a keg.
Loreal Paris 6R, Light Auburn, Warmer
Revlon 56, Brilliant Bordeaux but Brown
Emily Dickinson had auburn hair
apparently or strawberry blonde
like an oak leaf
apart from its tree.
Leaning back against the railing
on the unpainted deck
the merlot has gone to my head
while someone grills eggplant
and we talk about whether evil
exists or if it’s a type of social interaction,
the gray climbs upward
into Minerva, Pamela,
Reverend 2013 (Called)
of First Parish U-U
in Scituate, MASS,
who has gone gray,
unpainted pole the gray climbs upward
In 1982,
Wolf Man Jack
counted down “greatest hits”
from 40, 40 Solid Gold
puddles at the Top of the Charts
from the alarm-clock radio,
the sound of the dryer shuffling
for Saturday laundry
while wolf spiders
rode on the top of my head
though no one told me
as I went to my Psycho shower scene,
a pre-teen.
In Amherst, MASS,
I had a pet leaf
called Called Back
that followed me everywhere
a red asterisk on October sky
The angora bush
of loneliness stood on the porch
of the apartment complex
ringing the doorbell,
the fraternity next door got a keg.
Loreal Paris 6R, Light Auburn, Warmer
Revlon 56, Brilliant Bordeaux but Brown
Emily Dickinson had auburn hair
apparently or strawberry blonde
like an oak leaf
apart from its tree.
Leaning back against the railing
on the unpainted deck
the merlot has gone to my head
while someone grills eggplant
and we talk about whether evil
exists or if it’s a type of social interaction,
the gray climbs upward
into Minerva, Pamela,
Reverend 2013 (Called)
of First Parish U-U
in Scituate, MASS,
who has gone gray,
unpainted pole the gray climbs upward
The Mou-Mou of Enlightenment
An unusually fat person, “too big for real
clothes, more suited to tents. Crocs
are the footwear of choice,
” says Urban Dictionary.
A mou-mou:
Memorandum of Understanding
Minutes of Use
Erica Mou, the Italian singer, and Mou Rong
of the Tang Dynasty. Mou Forest
in Burkina Faso, in Africa,
a country Borges could have made up,
lists this disambiguation page.
Here is the hem of the muumuu of understanding
with blue & brown known flowers:
Mohammad Moumou in Stockholm,
a sleeping agent. Of traffic at night,
when in Iowa City, when with poets of understanding,
Codeine & beer make excellent sunflowers.
Go-go boots at the back of the closet:
pegs run up them. Like an indoor climbing wall.
An unusually fat person, “too big for real
clothes, more suited to tents. Crocs
are the footwear of choice,
” says Urban Dictionary.
A mou-mou:
Memorandum of Understanding
Minutes of Use
Erica Mou, the Italian singer, and Mou Rong
of the Tang Dynasty. Mou Forest
in Burkina Faso, in Africa,
a country Borges could have made up,
lists this disambiguation page.
Here is the hem of the muumuu of understanding
with blue & brown known flowers:
Mohammad Moumou in Stockholm,
a sleeping agent. Of traffic at night,
when in Iowa City, when with poets of understanding,
Codeine & beer make excellent sunflowers.
Go-go boots at the back of the closet:
pegs run up them. Like an indoor climbing wall.
Mixed Border
1.
A mixed border
of October and AM
of a M-W-F schedule
and irises and
the smattering flat
terry of silk violets,
happy flappy faces
to end-of-life care:
end of the line
as adjective or as noun,
colorless periods
strung together,
now unstoppable:
moves at right angles
around the blank acre.
Like an Etch-a-Sketch
it forms the north side
of an old house, a “connected
farm”: big house, little house
(also called an ell)
back house / carriage house
to the livestock barn
a house that dis
appears when shaken,
[The following doesn’t go away after a few more shakes.]
two short lines
under the windows,
the eyes of the house:
flower boxes for emphasis 2
alongside the handicap ramp
and the driveway
paved over for tourists
making a hand rail
and a mail box that’s been drawn in
with an actual address
that receives junk mail: 3
flyers about local gyms,
car sales, above-
ground swimming pools.
2.
A decorative border
of fruit and flowers
from odes from elegy,
of nuts and berries
from the roadside stand
from the poet’s working farm
the not-for-human consumption
beside necessary daily intake
gourds spray painted gold
3 then flags and flowers,
pumpkins and pinwheels,
red-apple-for-the-teacher
like a stenciled conversation
from stationary inside the mail box,
as seasons become holidays.
It starts where the farm house left
off, forms garden plots
of Spyrograph flowers,
raised vegetable beds,
it draws in the next house lot,
it lives the life it lives,
it heads down a road
which it has made.
2 but also a blur in the flower box
b/c of a few extra r’s
1.
A mixed border
of October and AM
of a M-W-F schedule
and irises and
the smattering flat
terry of silk violets,
happy flappy faces
to end-of-life care:
end of the line
as adjective or as noun,
colorless periods
strung together,
now unstoppable:
moves at right angles
around the blank acre.
Like an Etch-a-Sketch
it forms the north side
of an old house, a “connected
farm”: big house, little house
(also called an ell)
back house / carriage house
to the livestock barn
a house that dis
appears when shaken,
[The following doesn’t go away after a few more shakes.]
two short lines
under the windows,
the eyes of the house:
flower boxes for emphasis 2
alongside the handicap ramp
and the driveway
paved over for tourists
making a hand rail
and a mail box that’s been drawn in
with an actual address
that receives junk mail: 3
flyers about local gyms,
car sales, above-
ground swimming pools.
2.
A decorative border
of fruit and flowers
from odes from elegy,
of nuts and berries
from the roadside stand
from the poet’s working farm
the not-for-human consumption
beside necessary daily intake
gourds spray painted gold
3 then flags and flowers,
pumpkins and pinwheels,
red-apple-for-the-teacher
like a stenciled conversation
from stationary inside the mail box,
as seasons become holidays.
It starts where the farm house left
off, forms garden plots
of Spyrograph flowers,
raised vegetable beds,
it draws in the next house lot,
it lives the life it lives,
it heads down a road
which it has made.
2 but also a blur in the flower box
b/c of a few extra r’s
Ring Tones
Black branch of footsteps overhead
giggle-colored blossoms along a sleeve
the flowers are typed on the kimono
Glenn Gould mumbled, left marks above
Bach and Mozart, that inlaid forest
of topaz and ruby and emerald
I pull a peel-away strip of diacritics
from over a mother & son at the kitchen counter
a band of stick figures dancing
inside the long-division problem
smoky italics above the hills
sunflowers like cushions along the couch
bright threads of chickadeebluejaygoldfinchcardinal
in a needlepoint of a porch gone winter-white
branch of footsteps overheard in the woods
quotation marks around a single leaf it rings like a bell
Black branch of footsteps overhead
giggle-colored blossoms along a sleeve
the flowers are typed on the kimono
Glenn Gould mumbled, left marks above
Bach and Mozart, that inlaid forest
of topaz and ruby and emerald
I pull a peel-away strip of diacritics
from over a mother & son at the kitchen counter
a band of stick figures dancing
inside the long-division problem
smoky italics above the hills
sunflowers like cushions along the couch
bright threads of chickadeebluejaygoldfinchcardinal
in a needlepoint of a porch gone winter-white
branch of footsteps overheard in the woods
quotation marks around a single leaf it rings like a bell
Alexandria Peary’s third book, Control Bird Alt Delete, won the 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her other books include Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers, Lid to the Shadow, and the forthcoming Creative Writing Pedagogies for the 21st Century (co-edited with Tom C. Hunley). She has creative nonfiction appearing at Superstition Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Guernica Magazine, and the New England Review and maintains a mindful writing blog at alexandriapeary.blogspot.com.
