Ann Lauterbach

 

painting by Alex Katz, 1977.

A Reading

                           1.

Mutable stipend

saturated in the bright room

with a thin blue rug.

The pivot has some mystery

as in the dream: huge

white birds flowering down.

The morning was brilliant

but then junk

broke loose to scatter sky.

Was I meant to consult

this tissue of meaningless harbingers?


                           2.

Make no mistake: behind

the curtain, a continuum.

Blink, sun.

Behind the curtain,

old dark thrown across space.

I have an inky drawing of a hairy

stick pressing the wind.

Lovely, now, the milky shade.

Behind the curtain, junk

orbits and a serenade to those

who keep watch while the ditch

fills with lost things. The distant river

flirts with light. The water is alight.


                           3.

In the dark of a former moon,

an abridgement.

If this were prose, little

agreements would obtain,

and you could turn toward

the missed like an angel on a fence.

I mean a bird, a bird

in prose. The spun ordeal

arises as a missing object

its body enclosed so to be

a convenient newsy thing,

the missing soldier’s spouse.

What exactly is intended

to be kept in this regressive frame?

Some figure? Some petty marker?

She will trade her mother’s

ring for passage. Let her come aboard.

Veet! Veet! The blue jay’s yell

is hollow the way that light blinds.