Catherine Bowers lives in the country north of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Beyond Survival Magazine and is forthcoming in lyric& #7.
Working Notes
Somewhere I read "The hand begins in the brain." As you can see, I have been unable to let go of the line, so to speak. Altogether a rapid and graceless plunge away from the ship headfirst, hundreds of feet.
from Voyage d'une
I.
or haystack/bellwether plastique
As in eating of flesh
same old voicemail not largely conciliatory
pre-existing ambient rat-a-tat:
creation pornography euthanasia.
How light changes or/is/thought/to/have
expanded each degree of mutable reality.
No pattern no narrative no matter
lavender grasses
they come back wanting so.
Refugee from your own stairwell
skeptical terms of what can be
viscous OBE were it only for incorporeal
this is not controlled.
Just egress.
Seek tonal absence in watching for hawks
or what will be representation of ruin
in which those monkeys first stood watch.
Stood at the rail watching for what she was
not just what she wrote
Look in the cupboard see what she eats:
rough seas rock slugs mud eels
staghorn just below the surface each
worm wheel random roll isolate knot
no map city this sky night. Besides ruthless
ruthless routine and specific operational matters
continue to baffle. The generator for example.
Is the applause sea
or the floating self classic whitewash?
II.
response time
We'd already set sail
staring at one thing incident crossroad say
that lie/that lay ahead watchdog
even at this distance awake
to trace the contours of diminished significance.
Figures around a fire faces finally.
Or so we jury-rig
as to lead time lead line plumb
plumb vermilion ether
mercuric sulfide mangrove.
La neige la blancheur de époudrins
snow the whiteness of whitecaps
no stranger to the translation visitors
from a yacht if any fauve swamp
waterfall where none.
You can go for the day now
walk through several zones in as many hours
each trail of debris unique
as to the actuarial villa.
Spectral evidence
that an exercise of such scale sense fails
but you could swear archipelago
where earth curves
the current between.
Probe there ledge and back
not so much out as down black box
in bed with retronight opens on cliff.
Highwire series one sails under this alias camouflage:
spoon tower cock.
Vestiges of the dispute mixed with reality.
"Why is the knife on the chair?"
III.
persistence of vision
Pinto day our boat Cold Dwarf blows forward.
Toward evening sleeps by what it eats peripheral.
Burnt sienna surge. Sea wrack.
She isn't coming back.
What latitude the iron grillework city?
Tasks without meaning litter the path.
Contrast a jar filled with brushes inkwell
paper laid out table facing the sea.
Off the coast of what catwalk dive?
Asymmetric boldface whole ruined cities
rows of these columns fallen
boat slow grinding aground as she descends
speaks a kind of kid glove panicle or inflorescence
velvety pubescent branch.
There is no visible damage but foreshortening.
Of a considerable perspective.
And magnification.
Watery courtyard moving toward mute you
much as a meditation
specular thread you'd ridden.
Now it's steeper.
Lateral sun at your back for hours
then out of a blue sudden provisional
just operating on all fours singlehanded
heading toward what appears vast desert
of uncut page.
from Rebar City