The Cinnabar Kid
That the Cinnabar Kid was at it again is no joke; some image of him sitting at the window
Or going through it I- the moon, it was, um, with thee conversing I forget all time
With Thea in the pleasure loam at Taix arguing over the bill
And Morgan’s bedroom, nothing on the wall, cinnabar lacquerware on the credenza
In the adjacent room, we had just watched Solvent’s Moon, and I slept on the couch
She slept on the couch; We weren’t nothing, we
Which was some reenactment of a disappearance at La Ripa
Of the Cinnabar Kid in Terlingua a column of dust
Looking forward to noumena at the block party
It causes shaking
There was a sudden wind and fog that morning, and no one knew where he departed from
I was shaky inside but I was really at a party with
Doing helium in her studio
Singing a waltz in helium-singing
Painting solvent on each other so the Cinnabar Kid might’ve laughed
In that bituminous way we all laughed
It’s time to cut trees and carve
Lacquerware inserts show the Cinnabar Kid’s red -splotched neck
Now I keep the grain-light lit in the grain-shaped cave
Reaching out obliquely about a stepped-on snake in a letter
My arm shook while laying in bed
The Cinnabar Kid had to go to work the next day
So now I guess I’ll be up forever
Breaking dishes in the kitchen, just keep dropping them
Earthy matter; just don’t break the cinnabar
In Hang Seng, blues, keep overdrafting
My tent, it was small, and little raining, and we painted mud on each other’s faces
I heard the Cinnabar Kid fell out of an airplane in Idrija
Later married a bucket maker who had seen a saucer of light in the well
Thus enstrangement became a suitable solution
For image-making, full of angles
And I felt tattered, but not dry back at the house
Or get married in the basement of the paint-chipped plant
But I’ll see you after work, okay?
**
Bauxite Glooms
He contemplating the rusal moon in Friedrich’s painting under
chanticleer poundings from sberbank my brother
In collision uh huh, and, have to finish a watercolor tonight
After all this back and forth, my aluminium love have
We ended at the right moment — This all swept up in the dream
Of electrifying America 220k volt high tension to small telephone wire
When you called at the wedding and I heard you my tears
They flowed the wires through canyons and rivers
Switchyards, conductors, trying to say this was a tangible thing
To see a face in the dark, I was standing beneath a crop of aspens
When the man came over to show me his hands, Alcan restituted
Framing the walls, he was wearing a black cloak in
This actual material flux, and the “agency” of profligate forms
Alumina, forgings, castings, extrude shapes that
Shift in featherlight global riffs of aquarelle on the baseboards
Showing Cockpit Country or Odisha this base mineral light
Which irrupted, floating like this bauxite pontoon
**
TERRENCE ARJOON is a poet and book-maker whose work has appeared in The Oxonian Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Screen Slate. His chapbook Acid Splash, or Into Blue Caves was published by 1080press. He edits 1080 Magazine and The Brooklyn Review, and co-organizes the poetry series at Pete’s Candy Store.