Set a fat layer of fire grazing into the chest of engine heat, breast-
stroking against motion perfuming from the sickness of volt swollen inhalations. Let
this heat sag to a half-eaten meal not its own; let it eat rods,
...
The Divine Comedy, its crane beak glistening, the rusted
paring knife skull cap, bambooed sexual legs payloading and floating
in flax stubble, like someone
...
Pythagoras, sliced, freezered cat, defrocked Wal-Mart greeter, in anachoresis,
face welted with interior mountainings, mountain whippings, grinds ahead, dolphining,
dolphining,
...
Ten yards of mineral hair fall inside the cruciform hummingbird,
inside these unthrottled, ox-bearded shoulders of wasps.
Egyptian quail, the Orient of the quail, are a ringed hand
...
Then I went along the Amur River,
chert in my elbow, a grasshopper ligature bucking the end
of my tongue.
...
Ten yards of moonless hair herniate inside the cruciform
hummingbird, then well from its green belly.
And inside you, Enkidu, ibex-nosed, streamchested, the Friend,
...
I dug a slot into no address,
I dug a slot warm as a hand into the water of the air.
The eye seeing me is a charred-wood backed river cannonballing
...
Tim Lilburn was born in Regina, Saskatchewan. He has published six poetry collections, including Kill-site (2003), winner of the Governor General’s Award; To the River (1999), winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year; Moosewood Sandhills (1994), winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry; and Tourist To Ecstasy (1989), a finalist for the Governor General’s Award.)
A Surgery Against Angelism
Set a fat layer of fire grazing into the chest of engine heat, breast-
stroking against motion perfuming from the sickness of volt swollen inhalations. Let
this heat sag to a half-eaten meal not its own; let it eat rods,
iron shavings, green stones, dead yarrow, words head-firsting
from a rock overhang in the upper right, a skeleton of a seal; let it learn to heave-hiss
through its mouth the complete psalmic blade.
Five pound fire gravities against hurtling's musk.
In the chest of engine heat, a concussed floor;
whipped light heads cough in blow's trampoline, and choir above their husks, they lurch
into a blurred but, yes, readable circle, moving, yes, the gear
that jacks the cranial dome.
You go into the fish's mouth which is Siberian citizenship,
into the fish's mouth which is the body of a cousin at the volcano's wedding.
We come out of the colon tunnel onto the ledge, sweet-looking antlers
to smoke from the cloud deer. We've built a shack out of this numbnutsness,
We've hidden in this long grass. A stick will cure us.
Your eyes in the fish's gut are moved like a wand around the dark.
The knife snugs down through skin. And this is politics.