Experiment with Aspic

It commences. Here

   it is endless. Mostly

poverty. Parallel to

the railway track.

Manure, procession,

conniptions. It is crisp.

   A labyrinth. It is here

it commences. Lac,

it is said. Or albumen.

    Gourds, chikus, com-

prehensions of ripeness.

What’s fresh, what’s

   not, under the same

feckless auspices.

Luxury, it is said, moves,

    sometimes, at midday.

Mellow the light cast on

such euphemistic striations.

        On the goathooks

(up ahead), on the garlands

    (up ahead up ahead).

The muffled scene of death

to which the lines proceed,

curved. Citrus curling up

   the light, so tart it is.

   But here, here where it

commences, here, from where

the lines, endless, proceed,

    here the voices, here

the prices. Lacquer on this

produce, surreal photography,

tainted reverie. Nothing clean

yet, presence implied, not seen.

        It proceeds, an extreme

   intelligence can be held

in the hands, is. Slight burn

    from the citrus, slight build

from up the ground. Euphemism

    for shanty. Euphemism for

        indigence. Skinny body,

slender bean, sturdy drumsticks

   snap. Nothing clean, yet

the causal knives luxuriate.

Lone jackfruit, abandoned

beehive. Nightshade in terror

    of being shook. The lymph is

anxious. The child rears her

        ugly head, slow capacity

for memory. Lacquer, she says.

   Lacquer on this. This kind of

traffick is difficult to curb. Her skin

is light, her mother’s translucent.

    This is how it begins, the acts

of comprehending things, softening,

   into the basket, plastic,

        the voiceless hellos, a

      tendency, hushed.

   An impossible sculptural

    aspect her eyes laminate.

Things mature along

   this aisle that’s endless.

And she too, in the town

called Fraser, opposite

the police station and the

pork shop, parallel to the

railway track, she too

        developed symptoms,

    hysteria, depression,

     a deviant sexualized

    mesmerism. She told us,

not without resistance,

      that she had had an

   education. Her mother

spoke the apt languages.

She said nothing but lacquer.

   Lacquer on this. The brain

like a jelly, something trapped

        in it. She views it

with her double-eye, its

      glittering mound

   of curvatures, lipid-rich

      broth. We call it in the vulgar

gelatin. We will return to this point

later. For the child rears her head

to the sound of community, which

   she hears as tribe, later mafia.

    She appears to comprehend

but does not the sorrow

   of haggling. Whether she might

come to say it, let’s not insure.

   But it is here it commences.

The thickenings of lymph,

the persistent shyness, the passions.

        It is endless. As symbol, luxury,

she finds, and poverty are the same.

   She listens prodigally. Correlatives

    appear, disappear. She lacquers

them. But poverty, she finds, is,

    in act, in thought, a word, to her,

   not otherwise permitted, real.

Articulacy then was of elbows

    and knees. The spirit never quite

levels between her mother and

   the woman on the blue tarp,

but they touch hands. The mother

communes with nearly every one.

    The child rears her ugly head,

quizzical. Recrudescence

   that’s luscious, shutting down

institutes. Speak, she says, speak,

my heart is gelatin. If anything luxe

        is, it is this severe

unthinkable audio. Palatial,

   she says. In futures glorious

and systematic the word ATELIER

   will come to describe this

     pure fragment, this collapse of lines.

Curvatures, she thinks. Conniptions.

   The dusty, colloidal elegance, she

thinks, of air. She views it with her

        double-eye, sculptural aspect.

A powdery substance overlays things,

steady music. It is here she comes to

        comprehend, tender,

later, smell it. We call it in the vulgar

money. Speak, she speaks. The humors

reside not in but a quarter of an inch

   away from her, settling sometimes

as sweat. She was extraordinarily

    vulnerable, with not even a

rotten core. What might coerce her

   to nostalgia. Hot tea chilled jelly

dissolves. No quality here. It is

      nothing and the saw. The recrude-

scence is luscious, shuts down law.

   It began as tendency. Petty crime.

      Delirium of touching. Passion of

the silk. Subjective correlatives.

   Desire, dark wishes, ossifications,

   and abbreviations of sound. The

refusal to dance, the turning away

    inside the apostrophe. Meditative

processional. It got heavy. She

   lacquered it. She viewed it with her

      vulgar eye. She lacquered it.

         No delicacy obtained. She put it

   away in its pure future, glittering

mound. The opposite of hot tea

    and a biscuit. Lacquer on it.

Endless, mostly. Difficult to discern.

   The conniptions. Cognitions. This kind

of traffick is difficult to curb. But no,

       it did not affect her. No one was

             spirited away. This was not the meadow

         in which she grew. No one haggled,

    no one withdrew. It was as a lacquer

on her.