By the Numbers. James Richardson
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They were right,
those alchemists.
Anything—
tin-cold
eye of salamander,
a fly’s
green shield and styli
on your wrist,
distinctly six—
anything might—
mutterings in the wet,
two-packs-a-day
brass of sax, bright
tears pestled,
or your hair’s backlit
(same as the rain’s)
slender metals—
anything might flash out…
*
Surely one sip,
mused Midas,
gin and silver,
surely her fine engine tuned
to a dial tone,
surely her famous sway,
gone Gold, gone Double Platinum,
Rare Earth, gone Transuranic…
*
Anything slow,
slash-black and copper
monarch settling,
the shy key’s glint and turn,
sunny-cloudy
brass-and-tarnish fruit
paused at your lips, reflecting.
Any velocity,
water under the bridge
my leap
like dropped change rings on,
or seen from a train
chicory’s blue
extrusion to a wire of blur,
the train itself
(of thought)
on its track and track and track,
your soft, incredible metals.
*
…surely these vast reserves
(Midas, that treasurer, surmised)
I must address
with a safecracker’s
listening touch.
I’ll be the anti-thief
slipping certificates of silver,
the slim faux-platinum
yen of credit,
palms flat,
over and over into her skintight pockets.
*
Eyes, blank or deep,
a lake
gone bright dark bright
(on thin ice giving way—
one: roll up the window
two: when the car fills…)
the fatal-in-seconds
keen cold of a mirror,
the blank bright blank
that any word might,
any word might not.
*
No one my touch
(that treasurer says)
can bear and tell
(apparently did not touch himself).
*
Wine so cold it’s nails,
rings in the glass, poured,
your ring and its click
two-three, and click,
the bar awash
in digital and silver
whispers of the disc,
yes-no, yes
yes,
and This
Just In:
incredible metals
the shifting of your silks
imagines, unimagines,
the thought-blue
alloy of your lids,
the pistol
chill of your lips
my lips might freeze to.
Head-On
Flashing vehicles, unurgent lounging
tell you what it’s too late for.
Don’t rubberneck.
Don’t look down the front of death’s dress.
Don’t say that white oblong on a gurney
looks like a bobsled, looks like room service.
Don’t say it looks like a man,
all bright days jarred from his brain
like droplets from a branch.
Iron Age
Lest he could not make out my name tag,
I signed that I was a god, and would eat.
He brought me, as was meet, utensils,
but served, Lycaon, pans of scorn: sauté
of which of the human muscles I won’t say.
No problem. Nothing I had not imagined
as vividly as its happening. Whereas a man
concocts strange sauces for his cruelty
that he may forget what meat he feasts on:
thinner and thinner his wife, his pale subjects,
his guests, ghost-thin, and at last,
in anesthetic dark, painlessly he tooths
the sweet flesh from the bones of his own hand.
All this I knew, without what you call horror,
but since he meant to horrify, I chose anger,
and thereafter, it is true, he was a wolf.
All one to me were his turns and swervings,
confession, lies, indifference, remorse.
Say that I showed him heavily how I saw him
from above: no wanderer but a map, unmoving.
Though a man thinks he can hide in changes.
Classic Bar Scenes
I. Apollo at Happy Hour
Shoulders and faint sheen
of lotion, torsion,
loose