Albeit Erstwhile

Adeena Karasick
From:   Genrecide. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1996.

In incumbent umbrage, abyss splurge
shattered absence abandoned in
a shacked-up schemata act
echolalic rhetoric, a
conjugated silence of
mucosa aroma


 


 


                                                                  when my body brims with tolerance
                                                                  when it no longer holds me
                                                                  when i'm burning between
 


 


secretum retreats or
incriminate imminence

as cerea slits silence
viscose slick risks
distance when what's

                                                                                  sacred, secare, escarre
                                                                                     eskhara escarts,
                                                                                succours


 


 



 


 


in the carnage of

                                                                  mourning when mourning is
                                                                                      of mourning and dwells in

 


 
desiccated articulacy
as a reticent negligent
agenda atrophies in

a symbolic bloc rocks
in proxy locs.


 


 
           or a provocative glottis wrought


 


 
as an impossible gloss. gas. gliss. listens when
linguae langue linguis lingers


 


 
                                                                                  in onoma
                                                                                eponyma

And opens in immensity

in remnants, residuals, articulated in
exhortative sorts, exitin' in
fermata grafts damaged as
a resident hesitant

 


when desire slides in the absence of
studded space, echoes
screams

in the horror of

                                                         high mourning, if mourning is
                                                                  half mourning

to close in on
its silence accumulates,

as wretched homonymies,
anonymies, eponymies

in the residue of
recreant shrieks and bleakly ambiguous in

the scars of
tolerant hollers.


 


 

 


 
                                                                  if full mourning is of mourning
                                                                  remainders what follows for the
                                                                  mourning of mourning in the


 


 

 


 
metonymy of intimacy
crawling with contingency
mourning to mourn
the already-mourned

all that is irreplaceable, plaisable, possible
as the private, arrives,
survives

and the destinerrancy
of desire.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Adeena Karasick's works copyright © to the author.