Under the Sign by Ann Lauterbach

RIVER)
    1.
    And Diogenes placed a crown of pines
    on his head       victorious Diogenes
    spitting in the face
    of the ignorant teams
    Diogenes crowns the horse
    who stood his ground
    Diogenes
    the dog              illumined.
    Because he said so
    Â                trussed under the moon
    the blessing garbled as usual
    forgiveness
    spilled on all the stones.
    Historical stones, as they were what
    touched the core
    Â        trussed behind a shut door
    under an invisible moon.
    Because no one mentions
    rust across the river
    sun tissue     streaked or hairy
    the familiar beasty hills
    the atomic flaw
    breasted and phallic
    across the wide gray surface.
    All this, dear instructor,
    our material journey
    blown onto a radiant scarf
    as some remnant rhymed with
    scant flow
    or distilled into thought’s
    crowded integers     not to turn away
    to acknowledge the tracks of sky
    marking our way
    or drawn above
    in such yields no market could furnish.
    The affinities      their stake
    at the terminal hour
    you will not recall the willow
    you will lie down
    how on the train
    others exist
    along the way    passages
    her floral scansion
    ripped
    the horizon divided
    intelligence
    of love’s song to the ghosts
    they or        Diogenes
    who might
    prevail
    reading    ashes    leaves    cards
    no preference
    among their habits      the ghosts
    bored at rush hour
    among the gossips
    knocking sparks from each other
    the tide withstanding
    habit     bored by any occasion
    rising from lamps along the tracks
    moving under a huge blue tarp
    as if something had erupted
    opening the book.
    2.
    But if love of data refutes mystery
    must the philosopher walk away?
    The poet is a procrastinator
    and a revisionist. She observes
    the river is for the birds. She recalls
    the sacred Nantucket coast.
    Her vision is empirical
    even as a love of mystery refutes data.
    Geese on the baseball field.
    A flag, red tile, a metallic balloon.
    The aggression of sorrow.
    Marianne’s orange jumpsuit.
    Had better launch another trial
    without jury
    without the old cavern
    endowed with a seamless, impervious argot.
    If the last revolution
    discovered silence
    while the rest heard
    over the swerve
    a telltale scream
    braided or sewn down onto the field—
    what now?

UNTITLED (THE NEUTRAL)
    1.
    That we might find here
    that we might hope to find
    expertise
    descending
    or sleeping with everyone
    or guided by questions
    the neutral
    sitting like a duck on the river
    as an argument
    unbound in the face of it
    the fact of it
    and such easy equations
    reminiscent scores
    to trip out over the exquisite form
    the ancient in rags
    the past as an arrangement
    with knowledge
    forgive these slight durations
    the moments of prosody
    outside our chamber
    haunted by an
    articulate sublime
    without coastal reference
    without the bloodied narcolepsy of desire.
    Try the pathos of ghosts on your side
    the riven energies of need
    the rabbit is waiting
    the sparrow is waiting
    a creature lurks below the broken adage
    and so beware of whatever is next
    whatever has been left out
    about to turn up
    in the known stories of the home
    â€”she ran away, he did not stay—
    in the sarcastic iterations of the norm.
    2.
    Or instead we might find
    the neutral
    on a bright morning in
    late July, and wonder, in this shade, what
    is happening all along
    the scintillant edges of time.
    If to mourn is
    to be alive
    and if the shape of knowing
    is only the shape of not knowing
    what else is riding
    along this edge
    as it leaks
    onto the shapes of things—
    blurry cascade
    unattached
    until it touches
    the evident.
    Is that this ?
    Circling over the tidy episode
    a constant
    as of a bird over prey
    the heart’s insistent refrain
    wingless as a chant
    but then elsewhere
    wandering
    how the mind wanders
    into the verbal