Catherine Bowers


from Voyage d'une


I.

or haystack/bellwether plastique

As in eating of flesh
same old voicemail not largely conciliatory
pre-existing ambient rat-a-tat:
creation        pornography        euthanasia.

How light changes or/is/thought/to/have
expanded each degree of mutable reality.
No pattern        no narrative        no matter
lavender grasses
they come back wanting so.

Refugee from your own stairwell
skeptical        terms of what can be
viscous OBE were it only for incorporeal
this is not controlled.
Just egress.

Seek tonal absence in watching for hawks
or what will be representation of ruin
in which those monkeys first stood watch.

Stood at the rail watching for what she was
not just what she wrote

Look in the cupboard    see what she eats:
rough seas        rock        slugs        mud        eels
staghorn just below the surface each
worm wheel        random roll        isolate knot

no map city this sky night. Besides ruthless


ruthless routine and specific operational matters
continue to baffle. The generator for example.

Is the applause sea
or the floating self classic whitewash?


II.

response time

We'd already set sail
staring at one thing        incident crossroad say
that lie/that lay ahead        watchdog
even at this distance awake

to trace the contours of diminished significance.

Figures around a fire        faces finally.
Or        so        we        jury-rig
as to lead time        lead line        plumb
plumb vermilion ether
mercuric sulfide mangrove.

La neige        la blancheur de        époudrins
snow        the whiteness of        whitecaps
no stranger to the translation visitors
from a yacht if any fauve swamp
waterfall where none.
You can go for the day now

walk through several zones in as many hours
each trail of debris unique
as to the actuarial villa.
Spectral evidence

that an exercise of such scale sense fails
but you could swear archipelago
where earth curves
the current between.

Probe there        ledge and back
not so much out as down        black box
in bed with retronight opens on cliff.
Highwire series one sails under this alias camouflage:
spoon        tower        cock.
Vestiges of the dispute mixed with reality.

"Why is the knife on the chair?"


III.

persistence of vision

Pinto day our boat Cold Dwarf blows forward.
Toward evening sleeps by what it eats peripheral.

Burnt sienna surge. Sea wrack.
She isn't coming back.

What latitude the iron grillework city?
Tasks without meaning litter the path.

Contrast a jar filled with brushes        inkwell
paper laid out        table facing the sea.

Off the coast of what catwalk dive?

Asymmetric boldface        whole ruined cities
rows of these columns fallen
boat slow grinding aground as she descends

speaks a kind of kid glove panicle or inflorescence
velvety pubescent branch.
There is no visible damage but foreshortening.
Of a considerable perspective.
And magnification.

Watery courtyard moving toward mute you
much as a meditation
specular thread you'd ridden.
Now it's steeper.

Lateral sun at your back for hours
then out of a blue sudden provisional
just operating on all fours        singlehanded
heading toward what appears vast desert
of uncut page.

go to Catherine Bowers' bio page or to Rebar City
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