Suite (nothings) for my brothers by Stephen Collis
i. Relays
“The natural objects” responding to one another, oak trees to acorns, true, but also a speeding train to the wings of a butterfly, far away in a Mexican forest; the word “appropriate” and the words for snow amongst the Inuit; “clouds” and “dreamers”
affecting the looks in the eyes of “lovers” and a woman mumbling in her wheelchair alone; El Niño, and the warmer currents past between two poems – “you said this,” and so I said “this too” – stations up and down the line, relays in the traffic of in-form-ation, “coast to coast,” a sentence you cannopt escape it’s so “clima[c]tic,” such as “you must have dreamt it – it never really happened.”
ii. Love Mechanics
No, not those other ones. These ones. Blank spots. Bought and paid with a single day’s labor. The touch of the hand, the whisper in your ear. “You can come over later and press all the buttons.” The sentence giving you its sentience. Words waves form on. Leading you upstream to spawn. Brother after brother. Idiots who can’t handle the simplest equipment. Who is this poem helping, anyway? I break this word and pass a piece to you.
iii. Personal
They asked
for something
more personal:
I offered
the thunder
clap
after thunder
clap
and the pocket
of shattered
air
through which
three seagulls
fell
earthward
iv. Photograph
I hope this
makes sense
(I mean sits down and
makes sense, of its
own accord):
We are poems
investigating the mystery
of being together.
Placed together
in a photograph,
five men growing
older and more
separate, but in the
photograph, side by
side, it means something
I’m trying to remember what.
v. Story
We
wanted
simple
sequences
of
words.
We
found
instead
inarticulate
aches,
the
pulse
of
fires,
and
the
shape
of a
woman’s
back
turned
to
leave.
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