Marginal Levy

Paul 

—Poems by Paul Koniecki, Dallas, TX

—Anonymous Photos

the flames in
the trees on fire

are like a violin
last year i was

an umber fox
we cannot see

passed the ends
of our own

pain
as hills or bluffs move

you are
where electricity strikes

the top of
the tallest dune

molecules rearrange
and there is death

in us and there
is molten glass

marginal levy

morning break
torn hunk of warm bread

time as a race
to the next

pause
in the action

i would be a fool
to mention your lips here

torn hunk of warm bread
afternoon break

excise tax
inland duty

withholding customs
and butter

at the edges
of a borderland

soft sweet wet
i race

to the moment again when we are
able to catch and gather

mouthful of seawater
forest of blood

peninsula of hel
blown into an island

tuchola my cubicle
there are no more good

union jobs in america
your kiss your kiss

at the end of their hoary parking lot
at the end of every shift

the way salt can burn like fire
pumping blood hands flying in the air 

 Osprey

—for (and largely by)
Reverie Evolving

all it takes is

an ease
with finality

the steadfastness required
to see the

end of things
a few words

to break again
at the right

place blow through
or on light

at the hollow
bend moth's wings

into or out
of most difficult

equations solved or
enjambment as cloud

thermals acting to
lift the id

an easy way
with finality blood

the bravery required
to repeat things

the modern fit
is to wear

it looser to
the vest bite

break salt kiss
wet hot things

like words into
long lost lines

witness in a
time of smoke

far-off we went
for a ride

last night in
the dark headlamp

and city shining
again great black

sky mouth alive
and drinking while

praying to van
morrison i asked

have i told
you lately that

i love you
not in the

last ten seconds
you replied all

it takes are
couplets mohammed's wife

a smartphone connected
by bluetooth and

surplus red liquid
carrying oxygen to

and carbon dioxide
from the tissues

of the body
lips tongue words

the weed over
there with the

sunflower isn't quite
chartreuse or pope

cerulean pashmina rising
sea level the

world is gone
farmers of words

and sand we
are never done

Guide for The Liturgy of the Zodiac
or on the drowning of Elsie Paroubek

(to Henry “Dodger” Darger from Elsie P)

what’s left of me
an X in a spot
a scissors in a cut

the cymbal holding all the air breaks
breathing is a tremulous wager
the belt of orion and the zodiac are gone

oxygen is leaving    moonbow (no rain here)
the last map or the first map’s final
unburnt copy has also withdrawn

some people posit the end is up and bright and where a moment
of levitation sprouts wings and rises      away to the sun

dodger i have grown since we last met
arrows darts weeds poison and the space
needed to sink an endless series of cold

silver disks is piercing my side again
curare and a sluice sing the song
of the moon

this is real this is real pouring
out of my honey-leveed ears
the moment you comprehend death

isn't just a thought it is an involuntary
reflex floating in reverse
if sinking is a lost art

while the sea mistakes itself
for a blanket on a hill
sprawled out abrupt and slow

beneath an imaginary breeze
body in a body
drowning down

 Louisiana Wetlands
 

The first amphibious bird

Soon after the dream of her mother
a pallium of lake-weeds moved across her thorax. Elsie, 

grabbing a fistful of cerebral

cortex or a blanket of sadness, pulled the other side of everything nearer to the being end. Elsie, eternal intaglio, drown cut-mark,

absence-print, anti-relief, work of life now signified by truancy, you are forever held onto by what isn’t there, Elsie, your fingers

are glycerol. I can’t find you, sponges or octopi change color. Waking I realize this dream is my dream, my mother and Elsie and

the blanket are a mirage of maybes and reality’s coldest, deepest, most wet, maybe-cloak flies out. Elsie, sparrow of the

glockenspiel, mistress of chromaticism and dissonant beauty. When the absence of truth is more truth she is there and there is

here. Her body is a harpsichord or a gill. At the bottom of an opus is a lake-spring and she is a fresh-water maestro. My dreams are

sound. Beneath the surface of a glacier is fjord awareness. From her left eye the keys to Debussy pound percussively, migration as

the bends, bubbles in your blood stream, if
you rise too quickly to the surface of awake
and advocate for the legitimacy of

remembrance. We laugh and dance. I
whisper his first name was Achille. The hem
of Elsie’s dress sounds like snapping turtles

as it waves at the passing fish. A lady who
may or may not be her passerby twin turns a muskellunge into a tuning fork. The world

under the world is as happy as the world
over the world is sad. She turns into an American Kestrel again and flies above the moon.

 Kestrel

Red-Eyed Kestrel / Blue-Eyed Girl

The first time I saw Elsie the day had fog
or she was flying through a cloud. Grace studied. Nestlings stopped. Nimbleness

rehearsed a theft of falconry. The first time
I saw my father cry, half of us gone, I woke
up curled like a shell in a pew next to him

his pant-leg wet with sob, shroud of a man, suffocating, robbed, clock to nothing, page in a book of dead flowers. After the doctor

took my mother the state took my newborn sister too. We are now much later and I am the final dream of rust. Haunted by the

knowledge my sweet neighbor Elsie had been suffocated too. Over and over nightly I see her, missing visage, picture, mask,

facedown question mark floating in a river. Broken. Her bones born hollow for flight. Her eyes the eyes of owls. Readied for takeoff

yet too small to lift wet broken and curled useful as feathers on a shell. Still life figures come to study her commitment to appeal.

Conversions dream alternate endings and an inoculation revoking the free-will of evil men. Lost years, the smallest of us are, by

necessity,

poisonous or prey.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:
—Paul Koniecki

on the tar-paper

roof

you called your
garden i held

your melting heart like
the blue sky and
the white clouds

dancing chrysanthemum
morifolium in the corner
weeping broken petals

stubbed-out cigarettes
and stolen beer

 Cover, Reject Convention

(Poetry by Paul Koniecki)

____________________

A big welcome to Dallas Poet Paul Koniecki! Paul has a book of poetry out from kleftjawpress and NightBallet Press, and has three more on the way in 2018. He is married to the poet Reverie Evolving, and he says that is the best. For more about Paul, go to:

•••madswirl.com/author/pkoniecki
•••www.amazon.com/Reject-Convention-Paul-Koniecki/dp/1508813493
•••www.dallasobserver.com/event/poets-on-x-featuring-paul-koniecki-9498464
•••talking to Paul: www.mixcloud.com/LawrenceHits/2016-02-16-talk-with-me-dallas-tx-poet-paul-koniecki

—Medusa, reminding you that Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around meets tonight from 5-7pm at the El Dorado County Library, 345 Fair Lane, Placerville.
 
 

—Anonymous Photo

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