Brian Blanchfield

Careful, a night set on edge 
the European tradition of virtuoso 
and the raw desire to articulate.
I pushed them both backward on the bed in the end
and each played on, one first 
try and then another.
Soft then on succession thought.

The instrument all torso is loved where are held 
fitting the flown down housemartin with a reed
or belying midway uncertainty
in tandem the hands, and acts adolescent.
A natural vaults a natural 
development, his farther back barn jacket 
American and strewn as if spare.

Thought soft the crescendo all along
saws, neither stroke inward or from the heart
except it begins unbecoming
building in roomy youth.
We have our no, libido, go.
Then all limbs arms and loudly I don't want to
play down the skillless touch. 

Standalone heron borrowing a pylon in Portage Bay

            accounts payable

according in quarter turns her head by the dial

of her beak to motion under current

                                        until certain. One of seven.

But the night began later.

Even after the soaring bridge hid

the assignation, the dark water passing darker

though. A grade higher, inland, on the return path

the tedium of midges lifted that hung about

kissing level.


Like we left the guild victorious.

Late in the last of the sun all over the wall

across the lot the bordello larks on the ivy vine

visit one another’s resting closets

like boys and men in Taiwanese baths:

anyone could be behind that leaf or must he

prefer sleep to sharing sleep, the overcome one,

flustering, not just anyone, retorts

and have him know, special again only once

the turnkey checks, before the wind top to bottom

as in a movie of itself plays the shuddering

singularity of love, selecting no one

particularly anyway, but all in las peliculas

sit deeper in their popcorn parkas down.

Everyone’s in for the night except

you who had flown all day didn’t want to fall asleep

here I was telling your neck relax your eyes

were going to wake up raw without solution

for lenses, so it was better you find

the little baths they had at home. Why it was

funny I suggested we concoct it from scratch’s hard

to say and whether one of us or which was

good about everything. When you call and

the leaves are brighter red, it’s later, nearer

the sun, and relief is that vibrant.

That you can see already where more doors

were and birds the ropey circuitry

the wall will bare is an occupancy of mine.