The Milk Hours. John James
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in an aluminum fence.
They glistened in the sun,
as they always do. You
could say their vines shuddered.
—
Photographed by Isaac
Roberts, 1887, again
in 1899, the galaxy, the ruler
of man, the pearling
spiral takes its name from
the area of sky in which it appears.
Sussex, England, retrograde motion.
The daughter chained to a rock.
—
We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The universal
sense of fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget
name and date and geography. “How in the right are children
to forget name and date and place.”
—
Pained loveliness—the sonnet
sweet fetter’d. Morning, still, couched
in narrative—carrots taken
from my palm. Horse’s muzzle,
its silken touch, teeth against the skin.
The eye sees the mind sees
crushed petals in the pestle.
All parts are binding.
—
Constellations—huge
man wearing a crown,
upside down with respect
to the eclipse. The smaller
figure next to him sitting
on a chair. A whale
somewhere beneath it.
—
By ear industrious—attention
met—misers of sound
and syllable. See kale, see
rows of collard stalks—think
Cassiopeia. Think arrogant
and vain. Greek models, sea
monster Cetus, the errant study of.
—
I shall ere long paint to you—as one can without
canvas—the true form of the whale—
my parts are all binding—
as he actually appears to the eye—
I wonder, now, how Ovid did it—I pass that matter by.
Poem for the Nation, 2016
When it’s a weapon, when it flies,
the flag is a striped
idea flapping on a pole. It makes a fine cape,
my daughter says. She wears it on the Fourth.
I say the pledge but never know
if I mean it or I don’t. The alders bleed,
the shot trees on the Capitol lawn
bend in the wind.
Heat collects
in the quarried stone
of white buildings. “This is what
an ailing empire looks like,” you say.
I agree, watching mallards
spin on the Potomac. They paddle
on the surface
of the reflecting pool, webbed feet
beating in assembly,
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