CARLEEN TIBBETTS
some people want epics
after Lyn Hejinian
what is it to lust a city
punked by language
red life that rises
a tender gash
language is a victim
of its own success
crepuscular time
of all kinds
a derelict pattern
futuring rotted mirages
faces make no sense
dishonest happiness
gilded and only for show
patterns surging
history is an enemy
of things
what is care exactly
the tyranny of light
the slow life of
a quickening fight
in an open universe
to discover time is to
crash into one’s self
every sentence records
a stretch of becoming
invented as it goes
now the body is freed
from obligation to make
a story
the truth of the animal body
the mind demands to escape itself
the fact of water
voluptuously misunderstood
the face is made of astonishingly long numbers
ripened taut with emotion
and a gaze that worms
the little struggles of prayer
light gone rotten
the body is always softer than its image
that tender neighbor
hearts taking on so many
sheeny shapes
congratulating the idea of body
the accident of body
vicious rumors
emerging from the thin hour
the progress of symmetry
the symmetry of progress
the monitor glow
the poison of the dream house
the bang bang of being alive
witnessing the sea
the unorthodox ocean
a light at the back of the throat
a secret hex
building a home inside a question
an empty hold can’t be seen, only felt
the body is an event
heat implies body
an infested nest
a nevergreen prophet of ruin
a necrotic landscape
glutted with genre
dreams are violations
unencoded and shiny
like toys and still
quiet as hair
throbbing in tune with the
luminal pulse
afraid of edges and
the fold of the dark
a tragic feathery thing
outlasts human fantasies
desanctified problems of description
secret currents carrying
the pixel hour
sleepy with the hum of industry
the wilderness of permissions
that make myth wider
the fatal honor
of a limbed system
the last ears gossip discovers
Carleen Tibbetts is the author of dossier for the postverbal (Carrion Bloom Books, 2023), DATACLYSM.jpg (White Stag, 2019), DATACLYSM.jpg (Radioactive Cloud, 2018), and to exosk(elle), the last sugar (Zoo Cake, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Sink, TYPO, The Laurel Review, The Pinch, jubilat, Dreginald, Datableed, and other publications. She edits poetry for Dream Pop Press.