Author: Lia Yaranon Hall

if you sit still enough
the rwandan military
maracas and djembes
in hand will shake you
out the conga tree
entrain your thumping
beat an executive
order with six thousand
rebel forces ravishing
women strategic sheets
of boom and clang
embody their arms
inhabiting a melody
in the hollow
emerging from cobalt
that will take us
beyond sun embed us
in a videogame
car crash cocooned
via airbag inflated
by a tin
computer whose veins
knit as blue
and red wires pump
over the atlantic
in your blood wherein
one hand can
hold your mother
and in the other a drum
reigns and does not govern
someone resembles the madhatter
sits on bulging roots at the base of the tree
swigs from a crinkled paper sack intermittently
offers a whistle
wood barrels make boom
beads and rope
a hauling bump shack
stars of david
frankincense with metal
wind and saxophone resonant force of going
. some stop

On the path with basketballs or the curiosity of an archaeologist picking twigs remnants from the trees and carbon and dance steps on resting leaves there’s a reason for boots berets and beards and repetition and interruption

Su
n
da
y

night

the

bloo
d
y

Sa
murai

and

b
ee
t

sou
p
.

Sunday I spent in the observance of silence
Recognizing how space manifests in absence
I subtracted many words and movement
from a daily arrangement – a rest

What can take place in an expanse is boundless
What I can feel on a Brooklyn rooftop lacking moonlight
is the shock of oxygen after life in a womb.

I can see how small we play
how inferior we convince ourselves to be
When we mimic the morphing of clouds
How great and divine is our capacity

I ask the urban ceiling to blind me tonight
to wash my eyes with the broad reflection of tempered street lights
muffling the hum of dramas and masquerades
An endless charade of conversation exacting how to do
and what to interact to whom we injure
and where to coerce a choked reality

What can we murder under the sky? What can we sculpt without textures and angles and dimensions of sight?
How complex a body is built to move and be moved
yet simple to witness majestic truth – time as space

May we not stop in a swamp of stagnation, but spread our intents as seed
to stretch and sprout the span of centuries
We suffocate under souvenirs and need to unfold contents
that fill up experience

I will let the lull of nothing kidnap me
I surrender to the extent of no extent
the parabolic points of infinity—a gong
an echo and perpetual flight into the depth
of absolute arrival to the tune of om
and I vibrate with perfect resonance when all is gone.

When sirens part the gasoline trees
Salute to burning

Be selfish with your breath & thirst
For pigeon-like companionship

Observing silent the secret
weapons holstered by our nametag-disease.
Hello motherhood & detention.
How are you crystal man & married eyes?

Your igloo box and plastic spork bags will be lonely someday
no volunteer to rescue you. No regret is patterned
fabric and other keys defy our skeletal ways.

It’s the symmetry of this monetary scale and street Dobroe utro Otkuda tys that light and utter the gum mosaic pink and green unbreakable dead cattle feet and sequin eyelashes all elements of a proper burial

Where contentment in placid stone and sand bottom ebbed by storm and soot.
Ripple asymmetrical
catch and release the exoskeletal film
on a lake the patina of our charge and circuitry
we concur our desire to fly finally, but shun the sacrifice
of wind and tail obsessing a skin we can’t quilt together
our stitch is magnetic
unlink and recollect what we spread on our photograph rooms
what we store in our castle buckets and light tables
when we all inhibit
shadows

Who can be as mangled on a park bench or a building ledge—
constructions of sandstone stacked in time
compress the stillness of pre-elementary sight.

Why we fight and chew our words
Expel & askew
Fall apart ceiling and open the floor
we should make a brick house while fastening the cellar doors the shingles the slats the foliage of owls feathering the A-frame
no wing and no chimney can balance this view

What I conclude about your edges is nothing new
only I coax old by living it through
no need for the surface gifts reflected off prescriptive lenses
return all that is given to a thirsty pigeon.

I know what breaks a Greek plate
And the intent of a ceramic artist
The uncertainty of a kiln
And variables of responsibility
Within accidents going places
To happen and the ones we preserve
In jars for an occasion to spill
And break and slip like the coaxing sparkle
Of a drying marble floor

Masters of Circumstance never test fire
Clip yellow-leafed plants cradled legs in hands
Examining dead the skin mix with sand.

The intellect grows a peach a bit
Brain and dripping sweet a chin mimicking
The edge of what a human can face
A volcano inverted as ash
Before lava or blood before basalt

We suspend our bodies in burlap decisions
And dangle ripe in the trees burning
To bust open our guts to become spectral
Activity and savorily spent

I could have left a couple chipped
Dishes or a few finger dents
In the frosting or one yellowing plant
But at the pavers’ discretion
Without the courtesy of cones
We let the jackhammers fraction
Our tameless terrain

I know the remorse of an arsonist
And the quiet after the crackle
The twisted fate of a toaster taken up in steely flames
I know the accident of throwing inextinguishable matches
Of lovers and time and accidents
Like tricky birthday candles jinxing a wish.

Listeners shift attention to this smell:
Exploded tires are rubber siding for a shelter
plastic bags build bonfires

Down the block “smoke signals,”
Cry emaciated dogs for scraps limping

Competition cocks fight a frustrated crow
Servants “live-in” an outside kitchen; cooks for household
Flips flop on a painted concrete floor

Sniffing fake flowers
Makes us sneeze from the dust

Shelf of knickknack Jesus shrine
Maria-Hosep holds him just
A plastic automatic; little boy gun toy

His story is breeding
Listeners bear witness

Lives shred
Op-ed clippings
Ash rains
Terraces saturate the confetti shower of shell powder-body shock

Terminate the masquerade
Pudding body cotton family holy is the matrimony
Tobacco brother pallbearer plow the rice ceremony

“Piñata rain,” the milkfish comment as they nudge oyster structures
Confidence the mortar stacked to self-sufficient order
Built better than the fatal footbridges over ponds for fish
Broken by beat of boots and boys off boats
Born of pallet scraps and friction hands flicking off the ash
Born to break by drops in forecast

Clouds distort the cloud reflection
Pacific bleeds and puffs clouds everyday
Evaporating back to a saline state

Ships sailing
Even when the wind stops blowing

On a day when the wallpaper shone
preferable tones of uniform blue
green and the hottest white
I was walking

Even though the natives of this town might agree
that this alone should inject a fluid sense of serenity within me
time was rupturing

and the most outstanding feeling
was not unlike when you are going about your day
and coincidentally you approach an acquaintance

A light of recognition grows upon their face
which you attempt to imitate
they begin to wave a little
kindling affection

You realize they were looking
through you at the man
now brushing past your shoulder

You recoil from your peak
just before plummeting
to the rise of the sidewalk crack
your collected shell disassembles
entropic seabirds startle

Pausing at the overpass
I fish a pebble from my shoe

I throw rocks from above
a sign that illustrates such
(except it should look accidental)
beside the highway
buses substitute ladders and sometimes hoses
incandescent eyes follow
crates of chickens buckled in truckloads
where a body a vehicle

Feathers and fires fan
stretchers and cameras summoned
bodies shudder
Help is on the way

In my periphery an officer’s shadow interrupts the scene
He firmly grabs my shoulder lulling
It is not tomorrow yet
today I notice all the houses
built of brick.

Swallows ascend in plumes of smoke
their plumage grips smut
for no oil permits its resistance
they permeate nonesuch
from forth their suits no sweat
mere silt-colored sweaters

on the antennae when they meet
They make the sign of a t
then flee in the form of a flying v

the Tenant inside underneath
watches TV
does not see electricity does not
pay to view Sojourners’
Exodus Genesis Exodus

inside and under tenement rock
sensory membranes are battered lawn grass
to breathe here means to go blind
to adjust reception means to permit
transmission of pidgin language

no words just hunger no gestures
no songs but wings
mimicking the veins of the city
all that is leaving for far too many
not bombs but falling birds

it’s not You
rather how you will be
forgotten in beds of soil you turn
rich and rotten

every Sorry Thank you Please
erased of all our memories
anonymous feathers
formalities for stuffing our pillows
and we are all beaten cases
how we tried to find our fill
never meant by sense or will
for often said without a clue
what was meant by
how are you

Today I imagine myself at peace.
Find a f*ck-buddy tonight.
Update your credit.
Outbid: notice.
Re: Flickr acct.
Planning for retirement?
Take a holistic approach.
Be a class act.
Become a teacher.
Sneaker research: survey.
Om I mean OMG someone has a crush on you!
You’ve been pre-approved!
Win a trip to Las Vegas strip.
Could you imagine me in Vegas?
F*ck, buddy not tonight.
I’m in debt.
Notice the flicker of life before retirement.
Make a mind-body connection along the way.
Connect with some people.
Participate. Voice your opinion. Put yourself out there.
Say No to GMO’s in your Food! Say Yes to NGO’s they’re good!

This is a hilltop story dedicated to you.
One height of myopic vision
While laying supine, you see

So much blue clearly
To be had. Drink it up. Lay
One on me. Tell me something

Any order of words sounding
Any vision imagined sublime
Like skyscrapers submerged

Any version of titanium sheaths asunder on thirty-fourth
Street under blue street trees. Snails scaling the empire eating
Supper super blue-green algae. Transit fish in suits swim to suburbs

To the 56th parallel. So much skyline in the way of a seaweed
Salad plate. Lay your eyes on the rooftop landscape
A simulation of tropical visions in manageable proportions

Laying claim to topical oceans
From the 78th floor sightless to the local
View. Tending fishbowl gardens

Brimming rims, the masterminds’ topiary hairpiece
Atop Kubla Khan’s stately dome, King Kong’s pleasure pool
Pet sharks and streetcars drop shadows on the

Sidewalk floor by degree
And the sun sets early
And the evening breezes…

Frequently. Wind tunnels kick. Pushing
Shoppers, non-stoppers, strollers, steamrollers
Downtown downstream.

So much view to be had
So many angles cut waves
So much to stain the heart

And scar the options:
Stares or elevate 34 seconds
50 six floors seventy eight scoreboards billboards

Lay up to sustain the game play one-handed,
One button, one shot, monochrome, monotone,
Open. Standing alone where floorboards leak through sealing so much gray.