Gillian Conoley

PAINTERLY, EPIGEAN, DREAM'S HANGOVER

A griever in a party hat
     come to lay like a corpse
     before the weeper.

Stifle me not with the opposite.

Witness the gaiety of red socks,
     I have always been
     comic to you.

Let me entertain the yellow leaves
from white birch,

let me

before I die before I die

walk
as if for the first time
     upright into the depth perception

so that I begin to shade the place.

I am loving

variously

the far lateral
     of sidewalk
     the rough sequences

of getting somewhere.

Shall we go

home now,

a little preoccupied?

If you flirt with height

     with an appetite for distance
     you will get
     exposure:
     the brain senses the body
     is too far
     off the ground
     and shuts down
     such convexities.

As interstate widens
vowels shorten

     the farther north you go.

Leaves dip into an altogether
     other climate

the houses hurt the activity maligns the letters fade over the pilot light.

As before but with the senses disarrayed at what one can say.

It's bewildering but I can get you out of storage.

On the last five evenings of a life the newspaper
was read
is this necessary?
We are way beyond the elucidative stage.

To set forth thy other foot, to know of one's errand.

Oranged
sunset,

the melodies run counter.

Not known  not done

a form occurs
                           occurs
creation

attaches more world

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