Tag: elisabethworkman

there was an oud to exalt the process
and cloud to hold it	 flash 
lightning in the plasma when the initiate
says spasm me	   conch shell me    de-nation me
[in which nation = debt intonations cf detonations] 
forgive me over a large bowl of emo-punch   with much mirth
effluvia thinking we 	dream of salacious intrepid 
dolphins we	heaving-headed hydra we   feeling into 
concatenations this insufficient uttering
the undoing is the divine glitch 
of this invitation	dread kin inverted
tentacles of love

That it was not the artichoke

in punk bristling bloom or an unlikely

interdimensional dignitary with mittens 

knocking at the door not a throng 

of butterflies flitting 

in sudden single file 

through a rip in a curtain 

then vanishing not the egg 

that was on the desk 

then not on the desk then there

again a quiet madness not the crone

in the cave at the core of 

the sunburnt hill

drumming the caul

of the waning world or the agony

of its time-keeping not 

exactly no it was 

the pounding heart

of an emu

In the direction of a) pirates 

b) emus c) the cockatrix d) 

define oblivion. What was known 

was the sun was remote and everywhere

and unimpeded. No longer

within its light? The majority (70%)

of the planet’s wild. That was during 

a pandemic named for the sun’s crown

in the age of grotesque domestication.

Before then, an all but forgotten account

of the age of buccaneers who proclaimed 

they came from the seas (i.e. no nation). 

And before then, from a snake’s egg 

hatched from a chicken, a most fabulous monster

with laser eyes (i.e. etching the membrane

of reality) and poison breath (i.e. not-

boring poetry), from the Late Latin

Calcatrix, as a translation from the Greek

tracer, tracker–or old slang for a 

Wife of Bath wanderer when 

I now most want to tell you 

how emus won a war 

against humans

While the fool in her detriment doesn’t see the edge and falls, 
in exaltation she heralds endless possibility. 

Trial and mirror two snakes twirled around the healing word. 
Wand. Wind wending towards two wings. Two sentiencies twining.

Sentences trouble. Having lived in such a way, I, a queen 
of manifold error, can safely say: Don’t forget your demon.

Shadow you have a twin? How do you like to be summoned?
What is the best moment in a breakout group to bring up placentas?

If it’s true meaning flows so abundantly and multiples itself
 d  i  s  i  n  t  e  g  r  a  t   i  o  n  occasions rearrangement.

Side-by-side consciousness. Give up the sacrificial virgins
in a sylvan world a carpark a zoo a megalopolis a magnetic field

at the Golden Fork Buffet in the Golden Age of Romes.
Ambervision: the good, the bad, and the ambivalent

leave space for continuation and digression a dip into
the milk pool of day that at night finds its double

As reported from the top 

of the tower at the top

of the hill towering above

a baby surely somewhere

Can someone please heal this 

unelectable doom? Did you mean 

ineluctable? Is the state

ineluctable? Could you restate 

your question, dear? I was that bartender 

not as I would wish at The Page

but the Afterwit somewhere 

at the axis of splitting

and cohering, I’m a god/damn rose

Time to dip your toes in the ocean

the toe-cean and tendril out to sea

The fortress on the cliff that in the mist
could be an old money or military
lair you point out is Fulsom 
which at first I hear as fulsome 
with an e and not the end on m.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude  
except as a punishment for crime”
“Change things by changing their names?”
It seems telling of imperial history
that fulsome very long ago meant aid
and in modifying form,  first meant 
plentiful then came via the sense “causing
nausea” to mean excessive flattery
in a confusion of abundance and excess. 
How did we get to the Golden Edge of 
Everything and miss the stairs? Google maps
directs you around the Tenderloin not through
and instead by a guy in a suit, gun cocked 
in front of Hermes. At the gates of a different  
hell the anemones have teeth and the succulents 
and clocks grow eyes to see everything 
you couldn’t do and didn’t know before. 
In another version you get a branded cuff 
no eye contact and a courtesy card for what 
you’re not sure. In another it’s the thought 
hell is other people. In the one you can’t control
however, someone’s there to help you

“Spirits hover (vignette style) over my right shoulder. Coldness in that shoulder.” Thus, this is a rose.  Jaunita, Ivel, or the ones before, proud rose, sad rose, ecstatic rose, who was the first. A behemoth dandelion. Get outta here to mean come closer. I was thinking actually of Sister Rosetta Tharpe–that footage of her playing at the train station in England. The force of her, her elegant lady coat and her electric guitar. Her right shoulder must’ve been cold too. I will get to the vignette later. It begins: The tax was a tax on your time but not on your sovereignty. Give to Caesar what Caesar is due but take more time to listen to air? In nothing, so much. All that it holds and all that it has seen. The days were accumulating in their rhymes. Rumor had it you were already writing. At some point today I should get paid. The unpaid hours accumulate like air upon air. Spirit upon spirit. Didn’t it rain.

Who wants love? 

Does the state wants love?

Does Diet Coke? Does the state “wants love” speak

in triangles . . . ellipses? Lemon trees? Tentacles? 

Does it have a shield? Does “wants love” speak

freely? In tongues? Does it have fathomless eyes? Its own self-

fulfilling alphabet? Do all of the letters reflect

themselves? Like capital B? Like emu feathers double-

plumed? What does that sound like? Should all languages 

sound? B describes a balloon a holiday a house a womb

a dwelling making room for primal feelings

the bulb at the hinge of my jaw taut with poison. 

D like doom or dare. J an arm extended with open hand

to take, to give. After “That was 

‘Who Wants Love?’” the DJ said

“Maybe you wants love” then 

“Nothing can be done” 

Questionnaire: does the state have a rooster?

No? Does the state have air? Does the state

get up when it pleases? Down oysters like 

a binary star that swoons from one abyss 

to another? Does the state have a cock

that crows late morning among the emus 

in the arid glittery air? Does the state like 

Puritans? Does the state, like Puritans, 

strongly prefer rooster? Is the state in dialogue

with its one-eyed cock? Is it after all this time 

self-administering? Did I mean autocratic? Good

question. Ask again next year. Does the state

like Chaucer? Does the state, like Chaucer, poet

and administrator, use cock for god? Cock’s 

body, cock’s bones, cock’s passion, cock’s 

country, cock’s plan. Does the state have

a plan? Does the state have a cockatrix?

Opalescent octopus? Present.

Rainbow-flavored interdimensional 

eidolon? Present. Show up and others 

show up too. It’s no victory (No victor

believes in chance. -said N) though let’s fete it 

regardless, it’s less projection  more 

a hatched convergence. EMU ENO EMO 

Eidolon: 1) an idealized person or

thing or sorrow.  Silver wormwood shimmers 

outside the library with mysteries

of the alphabet. Eidolon: 2) spirit, 

phantom, apparition, petals on a bough.

S contains tooth and bow and arrow.

Aim to the morning star in descent to 

the underworld. The state may have a victim 

compensation fund but does it also have 

a release from victim consciousness

fund? J says dawn created the rooster.

        After Ron Padgett

No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.

No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
 
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.

No one driving that car.
No one driving that car.

In my notes I had only written Coitus Tower 
and knew it couldn’t be true the world is not 
so perfect and had to ask my comrade (because it was 
a labor to get there and sea air’s corrosive/lets 
other epochs in) its real name. What was it called 
the tower with the paintings that weren’t painted
by Diego Rivera? Nothing is true, everything is 
permutation. Slopes and stairs, slopes 
and stars. Don’t start running while looking 
away. In the misty air I come aware of a souvenir 
I’ve brought with me. Like any animal I find myself 
in the company of other animals. Hence, the hot 
survival tip is to run into the roar. It’s more 
of an invisible labyrinth to find which street 
is the one you’re on or where you are is where 
you are on the children’s stairs. It’s okay
to google map avocado toast then angel whales 
then fucking amazing trees whether or not no one is looking 
the gold-flecked light flickering an after 
without having known the before. The whole vibe’s 
neither sea nor air neither alive nor debt. Poetry upstairs.  
I think and lose the thread. Eucalyptus secretes boutique.
I had only written don’t run in the tower with the other animals
when Diego isn’t there. A closed system is doomed; in conclusion,
fuck among the ficus? In a perfect world 
the rich have transmolecularized into the best housing for everyone. 
The dead rise from the rooftops with encouragement.
It’s okay to start a new epoch after a nap.

I’ve learned this week that I am
avoiding writing poems about my
dad’s dementia (a word he has 
understandably hated) and Petaluma
California (chicken capital of at least
the U.S. maybe the world?) even though 
I feel compelled to, that my kids don’t like 
fattoush even though it contains
all things they like, that a lot 
of landlords don’t want to deal 
with single moms and their offspring
even though they themselves were also 
offspring in housing, that it doesn’t matter–
what keeps bubbling up--
anyway and anywhere--is grief. I 
learned this and also also: 
iambic verse was originally all about
insults and lampooning and satire
and that iamb comes from the Greek
“Funny girl with skirts up” which
brings it back to Baubo sometimes
Iambe (“not to be mistaken with lamb”
advises the oracle). Pig-farmer
beer meister hostess nurse et al
Baubo was the one to lift Demeter 
from her grief over her missing 
daughter (now, after much trauma,
Queen of the Underworld). 
Demeter wandered all the places
in search of Persephone to no avail. 
She would not eat or sleep and all
the crops parched, the gardens
withering, until Baubo met her,
raised her skirt, flashed her pussy
and the goddess laughed and the earth
was restored. I’m telling it too fast
but there’s an actual term
for this act: ano suromai or anasyrma
And it has a colorful extensive history
including Basque women who would
quell the sea with it and purportedly
on the bridges outside Eleusis
(where Dionysus was raised femme)
women would stand, cast insults 
at the passersby and raise
their skirts. Here is what the oracle
provides when prompted “Eleusis
where Dionysus was raised femme”:

Meanwhile, Baubo, the word 
according to a 5th century 
grammarian means “hollow” or 
“stomach” but I’ve also heard it 
suggested it’s possibly related to baubon
which meant pacifier then dildo
in a progression that makes sense.
When I first encountered Baubo
(in MFA school), I was a new
mother and therefore on the edge
of the social telenovella but
it didn’t matter. I felt pregnant 
with a void baby and that in the
confusion of taking care of a 
new daughter and wanting to 
destroy the stuffy agendas
and awkward bronze likenesses and
simultaneously wanting to burst
open, there was the mourning
and then there was Baubo.

When elders of utmost mountain
mock-scoffed from their mirth and the sky 
between them so hole-y opened      we fell 
in pulled by  amoral terror    screamers
of the implacable current

Consolation at ground zero? a soft 
body	snow on fur	mem fires shimmer
in the dark fontanelle        how to slip out 
of the dream of time as if from a hairshirt
or daddy's robe		there is no resistance only 
revolution	an otherwise being 
another where in attention	

I wanted to taste the ocean with my 
whole body		I wanted the celestial 
rose of M to make it so	 how it tore 
me to see         how I was scattered in a 
matter of speaking  repulsive in my 
scrolling waiting for the next out 	

But how the rose hummed how inside it was 
a casket and inside the casket a 
one-eyed mollusc a cycloctopus 
exhaling me how it was unappeasable 
I had to grow extra arms to hold it
how I have starved   how in a certain doom
it spoke to me   The weak worm hiding down 
in its small cave   wanted my eggs in a 
boba tea	It was a stretch	  a dropped 
eye-dentity 	a weird request to
liquefy like that but I was delicious
harmonies of galaxies diamond in 
a tooth    tasting the see   so long in the 
yooth then there was no more tea or mollusc
or rude rood me 






Rewritten in the tax office waiting room with a line from WBY - “The weak worm hiding down in its small cave”

Does every child begin with bangs?

In the morning C
asks if we can go 
for a cinnamon roll
to celebrate the first
day back to school-aka-
torture after spring break. 
Yes and the eclipse
you’ll get glasses for
even though the city
M-I-N-N-E-P-O-L-I-C
C? Yes isn’t it like
Mini Police? It’s not 
a wrong interpretation
of this city shrouded 
in clouds but it’s enough
the occasion itself 
at May Day Cafe to celebrate
the melting sugar spiral
that rhymes with sun-
flowers and baby ferns 
surfacing through leaf rot 
like ancient alien horses
the sheer joy sheer joy
in your voice on Sunday
really Rainday when 
you noticed “The green 
is coming!” while somewhere
if only in a memory
snail shells surface in 
the dark green muck 
of the lake’s lapping 
rhymes above with the 
the nine rings of hell 
where one is cruel winter
surely school
on behalf of institutions
everywhere is another
Deliver us more just
intonations the shape 
not the circle but what 
M said was the Infinite
Spiral of 5ths. Do 
you miss the apocalypse
if you can’t see the eclipse?
P asked. I’ll tell you later
that I listened 
to When Angels Speak 
of Love very loudly
and rang the cowbells
once my grandmother’s
the daughter of a butcher
because WTF are these days
announcing our demise
cacophony seeming 
another kind of toast
to the occult perfect aperture
closing one world
and opening another
See how much brighter it is tho?
Maybe a viewfinder has clicked
to the next ontological era
I said to M 
This is my confusion 
of gross and subtle 
perception to which M said
I.e. poetry
yeah bewilderment
not belittlement

I want to get drunk
on violets so I can
soften and melt
and basil to lift
the spirits and repel
pathogens and
self-pathologies.
I want pot-valor
to rhyme more with 
pussy galore and night
to fall backwards 
onto a velvet sofa
when we talk late
so sunrise is eons 
away and Eos
will remember this
time to ask for 
eternal youth so as not
to transmute her immortal
decrepit beloved
into a cicada a word
I thought about earlier 
when it was still light
and how it corresponds 
to drone consciousness
and lips and a door that 
appears after many years
where once there was
none. The question is
Bob Dylan (I have to 
bring him into this I’m
in North Country) wrote
Not Dark Yet in the 
aughts to say it’s
getting there. So… by 
now it’s not even 
a question of Are
we there yet? but
How do you feed 
your grief?

While the fool in her detriment doesn’t see the edge and falls, 
in exaltation she heralds infinite possibility. 

Trial and error two snakes twirled around the healing word. 
Wand. Wending towards two wings. Two sentiencies twining.

Sentences trouble. Having lived in such a way, I, a queen 
of manifold error, can safely say: Don’t forget your demon.

Dear, do you have a twin? How do you like to be summoned?
What is the best moment in a breakout group to bring up placentas?

Side-by-side consciousness. Give up the sacrificial virgins.
Leave space for continuation and digression a dip into
the milk pool of day that at night finds its double

Sometimes things get stuck was yesterday’s line that didn’t stick. 
This morning I find it here at the head of the class mucho gusto.

This isn’t a treatise on tabula rasa, obvs, I’m a mom, for emphasis:
she planted her palms on the table and the greeny flowers quaked.

I know you, I once thought, but in thinking the risk of dwelling
in dwelling the risk of rent, in rent the risk of great emotional pain

and feudal society, royals, nobles, feline supremes. With alarming 
efficiency the cats in chase clear my desk of last year’s receipts

Carma Coffee Highway Toll Administration The Future Holiday Station
Reverie May Day The Red Queen Anne Boleyn as the Green Knight 

A gust a series of grays early spring’s ugly and unsettled
what doesn’t root flies away–a finch, a guest, a feeling 

like the one that’s sustained me for so long. I give it a black canoe
for the fluid accumulation of days and their mists of dissolution

It’s half past chariot and the vessel is never not broken
Do you mean abandoned? I mean infinite unfolding

The water of life’s jellyfish outside-in/inside-out
like anything might move through you, dancer

The babiest seahorses, plastic particulates, nano-
cities in the butter light of nowhere else. 

In this cell after breathing very hard you might feel
like an electric tree and conduct all becoming

Skidding across an expanse of ice–a phone, a plate,
a blade, a parade of plosives like little bombs

at the precipice of abyss. Do you mean womb? 
I mean Western Civ. Hear torn in it and live

Violins like ecstatic rain. Violence a tremor. To be inside 
and born in the torrent of authorless volition anyway