On Compasses
Finding the way is secret.
Little fat hands took
the cover off the compass and
blew on its arrow.
Close
your little round eyes
and permit them to roll
in the oil of their sockets.
Alas to the tears that will never grease a compass.
Alleluia to the eyes in their plumpness.
With your eyes closed, you imagine that you need not
blow on the arrow again. Absolution to the blind north
that obeys the secret
and fattening wind.
On This Date in 2014
Move forward into the intensest cold.
A list of coldnesses. You hear
in the atmosphere, something, over
and over, like
a throat struggling to clear itself.
The intestines have fear of this place.
Sunlight were so bright in darkness. Recipe:
take off the glove, place the hand to the bare mouth and
feel the lung. Little parasites welcome
the warmth,
come inside
and sun themselves on
the interior window of the right lobe.
A throat struggling to
clear the fence. You,
who was you? What concoction,
what ambivalence that modifies, but does not
raise the temperature?
Beckon as a noun. The throat coughs, eructs
into its face.
Clutches its
epiphany, then
crushed, it releases an odor like apple and
solvent. Air, air
gulps the odor and emits
a further cold.
Pilgrimage was a list of things.
It were a season that wanted to go on.
Merely a body. Disinterested.
Did they know the way: you and you?
Summative, not enjambed. Or barely.
The lips broke open until
they were shellacked over by forward motion.
On the Explorers
Not
explorers, exactly. Lovers.
They crossed,
they were crossed,
they were crosshatching.
Reverse direction.
The one had a toothache and her explorer sucked
it, the molar from her mouth.
It was a compass. A miniature, but otherwise perfect, enamel body. Without
using their hands, they cast it abroad to
create a new direction.
Revise course.
They were thrown into a great storm.
It might have been called a kiss or
an act, they were
cross with each other.
Divination on the frontier is a frontier.
Reverberate.
That smallest of enamel bodies was enveloped in snow.
Re-
Re-
newal.
No, retrieval.
One body beside another body is a feature of divination.
Snow lumped up on the lodestar.
And an explorer retreats
into an explorer while they pass ivory and ice.
Resuscitate.
Mouth into mouth.
Elizabeth Robinson is the author, most recently, of Blue Heron (Center for Literary Publishing) and On Ghosts (Solid Objects) which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. She is a co-editor of Instance Press.