Non
Sequitur
She and
he read like a whodunnit
The whole neighborhood was in suspense
Morning brought with it a pea soup
fog and endless abstractions
(e.g., morning)
By the time noon rolled around
she'd succumbed to her usual
blasé take on life and stretched out
odalisquelike on the ottoman
a dry white wine wetting her lips
a soft jazz on the stereo
fingers twirling the glass-smooth
stem of the goblet
wringing his neck
(clockwise, counterclockwise, repeat)
as systematically as her mind
spun its numerous threads of suspicion
She was
still in her bathrobe
when he entered the door circa 8:05 P.M.
She concluded in an instant that
the skimpy evidence she'd compiled
against him throughout the day
led nowhere
She petered out in his arms
He held firm
Contradicting their status quo
they dragged each other to the floor
and ransacked the contents
The unsullied berber was soft and new
No need to unsheath the stiletto…
The
Ocular
Never willy-nilly
but still without choice
a lidless neuter eye
sat
stock-still
Januslike
twixt the two voids
as though straining to see
what?
The illusion
of
thought was day
Night was
only night
Denouement
Complications
exist
No need to frighten them away
Can't really
Wouldn't help
Embrace them I will
I who dare to say I
Ominous clouds were sewn together
almost seamlessly the whole day
Rain in stitches till late in the afternoon
A myopic sun looked in too late
to qualify as a showing
She cell-phoned at her usual time
The girls played Catch Me! Catch Me!
We lunched at Mickey D's
The harbor quivered as she plaited
her gray hair above the mirror
Gulls yawed in the corrosive air
Black swan or sailing sibilant
Pelican igor-ed on a buoy
Instinctively the car-ferry
ferreted out its female counterpart
The Jeep shook the beads of rain from its
teal-metallic hide and wheeled up the ramp
Coffee at Starbucks on Balboa
PCH = a fairy-serpent's tail back to Long Beach
Santa Catalina cloistered in mist
Three messages on the machine
Trash e-mails
Mail arrived late
She arrived at her usual time
The girls played tug-of-war with a flannel nightshirt
Mid-winter: the timer was set for the outside
lights to come on at 5:00 P.M.
No bites on the condo
though the open house had counted ten
CNN like an old 45
She sipped her wine and spieled her day
The mantle clock mimicked Westminster
By bedtime I'd untangled nothing
so settled for this journalese
Elegy
(Much Belated) for Ingeborg Bachmann
Save
wind and time and sound
--Ingeborg Bachmann
Rome is
burning
a second time
Wings are calibrated
A halo forged
Vienna's Ring is a tourist's
venue for you even now
isn't it
Once bloated with happiness
surprised by sadness
Once upon a time
Word upon word
You-
Man
Malingerer
Murderer
Malina and Ingeborg
Malina and I
make our excuses
(We're just around the block…)
step from the tourbus
walk arm-in-arm
spitted tongues
to taste
falling snowflakes
falling ash
Copyright © 2001 R.L. Swihart
