Amy Garrett-Brown

Three Poems

Red-Orange
“One must not think life with the mind, but with opium.”
                                                                    Andre Malraux

Sugar maple, varsity red, relative of the GRACE SMOKE TREE, a moog like thing:
leaves reach up when dry,
a mother/daughter-bird-like notice little inner chambers; loculi.
They are lactiferous vessels and carry two things.
One a magical luxury, famed cure of ennui,
a monumental discovery in fucking off.

“In 1803, Sertürner isolated a crystalline sample of the main constituent alkaloid . . .”
It grows a slate blue husk, bulbous and fertile, after the flowers have died
(the endless lecture, a field of poppies, satiety, and water stains on my hands,
waiting for the brilliance to pass into grey); there is a tool.
A relationship.  Oily and symbiotic.  Everywhere you look,
the milk-down the smooth sides, after being touched with a nushtar,
gently, it weeps a honey dew, a raccoon, a lemonade, a red-orange maple leaf.

She was lifted up: ascended.  The next level, void of madness, mean a need for,
slice the sides, you find black seeds, mosquito eggs, the history of Madak.
Acer rubrum a liaison for terracotta, white sand, terrorist assassinations,
a cream, more honey than dew, reprising dreams:
the parallel structure of a mosquito and an oil well.



Grey
“After all, romance has its didactic side as well.”
                                                           “Pygmalion”
                                                            David Ehrenstein

Extraordinary ray of
slate blue
studio of
anyname

close-up cogwheel cow

photographic light:
gelatin has no
E number.

The recording
(colloid gel)
of light rays
blind from
a solar
eclipse

goes around talking
about
the pinhole
to young
children,

double refraction
birefringence,

girlie shoes
I got from
Target
brushed silk

glurl

butty glirl


The golden child
              perpendicular


Heron
              parallel

Here on,           ordinary/un

blue grey
dress
like a like

slate
between infrared
and
ultraviolet.



Indigo
               “every anything . . . things drift”
                                                           Peter Gizzi

. . . buzzing
dying
shaking
wires
black and red
(to escape
for refuge)
when it rings clear.

gernal gone gun
journal gerund peri------od-------
ical
peridot
gunfighter
snow in my pond
blue flesh
oh, ice (!)
and ink
and veins:
the blue blue
no longer here
monument
erected
becomes water
the color
new
a rabbit
a mini-skirt
blue shoes
camouflage for “linger.”

metal, but it’s
cut glass,
diamond gun metal
soldier

inside the herd the edge of it
anathema
like a niece
no, gneiss
after the fire
the edge of mountains:
black bloom
the blue black of

dormancy
(stars)
red dwarf
after death
sounds so
dwarf dwarf
earth like
how do we know
how blue?

gernie journey germ-------in--------
ous,
germinate forecast reassurance,
expanse
upward

indigo, like a dog,
rips at knees
fray     egg      liberty.

germ
white white
under the right
circle
an outline
an out
line
a negative
revealed in
liquid (blue liquid,
isn’t it all?
without color).

A pitcher mold
the edge:
a map with lapis,
sole
mary
a pitcher
a vessel
a sea with rolling dragon
edges,
skin
indigo
underneath
its nexus
weakness    Achilles’
arrow
invisible
suede

musical

like faded
like from
like form
like ink
faded from
continents
form
names
changed anyway
the edges torn
                anyway.

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