PURPLE MOUTH LIFE
so brief and the briefer
the purpler so memory so ink
to lease at least the taste
of back in the day
where the idea was taste
lasted for a generation
in the throat’s insides
so cranes
epicurean fiends
so cranes
jealous worthy
info hiways
of tipple so guys
craned cranked themselves
a little each day
to maximize the wine
just as guys will
gear towards performance
missing by a tire swing
sagacious with raintar tannin
the point about life
a pigeon right at you
a bee right at you three tree bees
the ducking the dancing true
how you roll a holy lacquer gold
over reflex or duty’s dayby
that’s all
guy says that i might swallow allow
the same coin of wine mudded
hourglass going dunno down
threads its traipse toes
mingled with conjecture
as per the yawning clown
as per the swell portico this
lamplight quaffable
most unbash
mimes a freshfruit
mine is too
attenuated peach lights
pressing pink and orange
against the blue
penals of steel
grandpapa there
couches his shark shoes
on in the corner there
proofin history
a matter of stretching
back from fishing
so sound asleep sound
little flaps of lips his
while cuts down a coast
of forests in zanzabar
his neck trailin out
his pantleg his
out past the disappointment mailbox neck
his out past the twin oaks neck
out past the goldenrod
his out past the yellowrocket
his now you’ll have to
see it with your mental neck
out out beyond museum barn
whole county one
abandon sounds like a rainwet
pigeon slappin her blase freaked
blase freaked heart awake she
feebles touch bad luck barn
whose springruns shits never dug out last
whose roof cut gill prodigal
whose weathered roof’s harelip slit
permits one bad ban(d)ana
string of good day
light to ride
down floorwise and lift
given springtime next and natural
damps of nowhere inviting
this one regal thistle up
for whose wide wide
cactus britches
and personal space
purple heart i writ(h)e to vision
through sugarcubes
**
NATOMY
they will kite and key over
the tallest mountains
the snow jag hiss kind
the heart monitor in heart
attack’s welly foam kind
and they will with the eases
of phrases once
struck you
in the belly of the bell
wcw purrin beauty
obliterates
authority
hank baitin pinched vinegar
purple bruise fruit bird
perception unction
my reading all that
in susan howe and
my maybe somehow
splicing johnny keats in
puts me in mind
of folks giving birth to overalls
back when brass clasp
fell on off an amniotic tongue
some power wire undoved
bless the ragged
vinegar sputter of a back-
glancing heart
you know i am the spanner of spaces
you know i am the giver
back of sound
in methy rentals
on dug skin
their bones hangers
seems they step on slips
cast off bad water
in movies when she
she’s running
for her
dark life
when the metal ploughs come in
the people were sore afraid they’ll
poison the soil the accented said
no sir just gonna steek to my
wud one offered one old bohunk
his skin so moled by sun
you’d have thought the day
had a hidden behind ear
number 2 pencil had a hidden
test and was bubbling
in C C C C C spinning circles
closed in him
spat tar
nicking it
in to him
always heard that’d get you
at least most of the way to
not that far from average that away
hate to say it but it’s to crane
credit the chemicals on credit killed
the fields same russet deathlife hillsand
shoehorn scissor
shotgun crane mouth
bellow tomato beanie
above rope or straight smoke neck
above last year’s wasp’s nest blown
one stop shop stab and done shuttle the hack
down the smoke rope
held to the oval then
for one fledge of tocks then
fuel to forge force bird sky worthy
your fate to go down
something 2 carrots thin
plastic bag in elm arm alarm
coked up man’s fixity eye
i go where the night leads me
says slapping at his pockets
like money fights
flights or bites
when scissors and
shoehorns get busy together
with rope and old wasps nests
there you have my
memory of my whack ass
stepdad cutting my hair on
the yard missing cuttin my ears
and carcass flies over
a county off comin runnin
cuz the baste sang
oh i ain’t got
no turkey flats no
and i knowin then
the bleedout secret
freshet candle humalong
someone swimming
flying fulsome in whim water
the milk peace all that glide
seam gem wise the water
midswim mind and then
icicle carrot gat and then
gargle gargoyle and then
gaggle gag gull and then
on into the blown
wasps nest bulb belly body
probably half alive still pre lift
but then what would you be for?
if we are all a little or a lot
a woodlot a good load
what would you be for what?
mess i vote for
let my pretty
my petty parts scatter
cross the platte’s
skimmy
bends
many or one
footbridge footage
jitterbulge floating
until
a toll
atoll
cu
rr
ent
sw
all
ow
fis
sh
whip
there’s worse overtime
friend than wings
past dawn
unto the waste corn
walked off the job
those statues just did it again
ah history we
try and stone it
sand bleeds
**
ABRAHAM SMITH is the author of five poetry collections–Destruction of Man (Third Man Books, 2018); Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007)–and one coauthored fiction collection, Tuskaloosa Kills (Spork Press, 2018). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He lives in Ogden, Utah, where he is Assistant Professor of English at Weber State University.