Luther Jett

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BLACK SUIT

Remember breathing
as if a distal comet
returned to foam
this bright ocean called
here and never
given any other
name -- as if choosing
was itself
choice enough --
Tell the black suit
hung on its closet nail:

Climb down and dance!

[Published in Articulata, but with an unfortunate typo, here corrected.]

THE LOST

Amerika between your cities
silence of abandoned
hills and rivers sleep that
dreaming never
knew the song of railways
completed broken by
mills grinding and iron
blindness
casting
coins in water
without ripples

[Appeared in Bulldog Breath]

USED BOOKSTORE DREAM

In city but you cannot still
on company but anyway you
time but still entering that
door paint-peeling magazines
scattered everywhere and the sea
only a few blocks if you were
seen north of company time
on the magazines it is here
but entering you forbidden on
time the company if the sea
city in you still and
forbidden but you anyway
and the stars overhead
winking secret sea door
on company time

[Appeared in Articulata]

WRONG NUMBER SORRY

solitary Saturday night phone
ringing ten o'clock who
at this hour?

"hello?"

tiny voice at other
and once to the north

"hello?"

end of the line
wall of ice a mile

"hello,
"hello?"

high mammoths walk
following words I cannot
thousands beneath cold
understand

seas now

"Ah, wrong number!"

tens of thousands of

"hello?"

mammoth bones under

"I get wrong number?"

grey waves once ice

"Yes, yes
"wrong number,
"sorry!"

--line gone dead--

wrong number disconnect
and no more mammoths
solitary Saturday blue
wall of northern

ice

"click"
--wrong number--
--bones--
-- " --

Copyright © 1999. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Duplication of this poetry and/or art without permission of the author/artist is forbidden under copyright law. Please ask permission if you wish to use for non-commercial purposes

Tuesday, July 11, 2000