Fortnight's Insignia

to endorse the dust
shall not add to your bounty

     —Samuel Beckett

Go soundly, soft harmonium drag. The temper is a stockade. The vestibule is a spot to get us off if you've been clamped down. Have you now? Come inside to hear of it, but speak clear & slow for the tape to coil you in—I'll need this later for a transcription.

Now to the hinge of memory, the dropper of orange cough syrup, & a flat file for the wall safe. What are your tools & how do you secure them to your person? Clicking one lamp off fastens shadows to each other, but that's the trick you taught me. Lepers Boat Creek, they call it—its apostrophe also wiped free.

So, the little courier grows dud wings & can't lift off. Isn't that how you want it to end? Devoured by a wolf pack after they looked so docile at the river?

***

The lobby's lone attendant twins to Warhol's Elvis cowboys in the hall's double mirror. Sounds of fucking in room 304 & we're in room 305. So it's gonna be that kind of century. The ducts blasting. The window onto a window onto a supper fight. Snow twisting traffic into a V.

The ocean chopper's hunting for ice on which to land. Now pull the dead pilot's gear off his head. Do we take his wallet, too? What do we hide in plain sight? The worst of it won't sow into broadcasts.

Fledgling pilot, your days are soon to end. The storm's indifference is a vehicle. That funnel is only its shape from a satellite learning your face.

***

What you see will peel the paint from the dead detective's glass door:

Fortnight's insignia & Twombly's cape shadows dragged across the plain. Birds lift from the cataract, a pool of stars.

A winter month's short door through which to crawl.

***

Underground now with a heaven of storm water called runoff by the above.

I hold the map up & speak into the forming ice for an echo to crunch back.

From The Courier's Archive & Hymnal (Sidebrow, 2014). Reprinted with the permission of the author.