"Think of the long trip home."                                                 —Elizabeth Bishop 

Her fish still thrash
on the bottom of the boat,
their glutinous stares
reworked into silver—

a thousand so betrayals
lit up each a sun
while we're sworn in on floats,
our jawing with Jesus next to finished.

So now is the infinite refrain
convinced of most everything
though the toes take to trip after trip
under stars punched from skies

where the gulls rinse their eyes
and our talk's heard for centuries,
a list of our slips or some flares—
who'd be drawn to such light?

The fire which once lent
its imaginary body to our cries
now only gives hue to our hearts
and curls into imaginary crowns—

could this be why she leaves us
a map of a map beneath our seats?
swapping her stake to our story,
the hills where they say the saints slept

for the desolate lure of the particular,
her last days spent roaming a splinter.
How we'll welcome the watery exchange,
anything but the spume of our mouthing—

soon I will also be done with most my facts,
pulling the skin in from the shore
where a whispers a whip's rest
and truth always a toxin, its fingers crossed.

Apparatus

God knows when I open
my mouth it ain't pretty,
twisted cage I've cranked
up from the depths,
my speech lined with brine—
a sad wreck of talk
you can only be sorry for,
conjure chalk-squeak or sputter.
Pay no mind to this silver—
we'll always be indebted to dust
and the fine grind of words.
Though the tongue remains new born,
pinkest splash of immortality
always flaunting its flesh
there are those like the grasses
that conspire against us,
who quietly cheer when we wheeze
and round the vowels of oblivion,
who would cut us by halves
with fingers raised in peace.

Another moon settles on the sill
to see about restarting my heart.
Lord, it could crown me with light
still these lungs would not last.
And who knows where this air's been.
I hear screams from what's left,
organ music navigating my grid.
A creak now accompanies most tasks.
Oh please, what can anyone say?
You can only glide beads
in my absence, manipulate
time with my countenance.
Soon I'll be nothing but narrative—
dragged out like a centerpiece, ageless,
just more of those teeth you
always see drowning in a glass.

Mark DeCarteret was born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1960.  His work has appeared in numerous reviews including AGNI, Chicago Review, Conduit, Phoebe, and Salt Hill, as well as such anthologies as American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000) and Thus Spake the Corpse:  An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press, 2000).  Recently his poetry has been featured online at Maverick Magazine and Mudlark.  His most recent chapbook The Great Apology was published a few years ago by Oyster River Press for which he also co-edited the anthology Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets. 




 

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 Mark

 DeCarteret