Del Ray Cross

Six Postcard Poems

Wings  (2/1/07)

“I still have the writing
of it going on inside me.”
(Notley)

I have no resistance.
Pain is a demon.  It’s a
charade.  We all make adjustments
for love—

in order to create a character.
Split open the fruit and wait
for the ghost.  Ghosts
can come at any time of the day
(not night).  This

(I write this
in France.  It makes
no sense at the time.)

would be compromise.
Nothing less simple.  Spitting work
underwater
(at each other).  Get lost.



Back to Back  (2/6/07)

A brain’s use on television
is not monitored until mid-way
when the gears are switched.  Good
luck with that.  We fold over into
each wall, north and south.  The fog
doesn’t know how to grease love’s
thick memory—it just takes hold.  &
I won’t squeal about it cuz we’re not
given adequate measurement tools.
That requires hypnosis.  You tag each
file with haute graphics from next C
son til the powder breaks your neck.
Say “Look, I made a tattoo under the
hairs on your meat.”  Then you come
home with another.  It’s different meat.
This one looks rhetorical, like a Cig
nature scrawled into the sand.  I say
hello to it (“hi”) and the greeting burns
our egos; each bleeding its last magic
onto the books we aren’t reading.



Dedication  (2/9/07)

Usually former lovers appear
in aggregate, flipping cellphones
as they approach.  But this time
I held a carton of milk to my ribs,
closed my eyes, and waited.

Officer, he had reached a maturity.
His eyes would glow as he
peeled labels off beerbottles.  His
eyes, his cokebottles.  He drank but
the wisps his frame would allow.

Here is the real story.  I can’t make it
up.  Last night as I sauntered
listlessly in front of the new mall,
I saw a ghost.  It is simple to say
there was nothing to do but follow it.



(U) (U) (U)  (2/15/07)

there being no O tonight
being too much close to noise
to make a cave

keep the book as a sleep
in it closes up the room – cave deep
walks over to get some air

A    another air
fall in   (M)(E)

something to make it clear
U are rich U leave
in walks the street

I

which it opens you up
takes you down no end
puts you on



Castabout  (2/24/07)

Old Italian families.  Impoverished designers
become involved.  That’s what the
citizens pays us to do.  The process
is a scandal unparalleled in the annals of

an idiot, an actress from the red carpet
who was conscientious.  She had
the lily and as soon as I found out
I can smell the fire but I can’t read it.

A series of Italian meetings.  A version
of the Brahms second concerto.  The
pale grey hammer of a thundercloud
tending toward light music potboilers.

Metallic rhinestones.
The rip-off list grows daily.



Critically Naked  (2/26/07)

I love the French people.  Are
they playing it tight and hot to the
mainstream tastes?  Yes!  Gwyneth Paltrow, for
example, what exactly she grows up to:

turned up in a red halter dress and tried,
already in decline, when she was given a
blank check because its artists she ripped off.
What else?  Oh who could explain the endless chain of

Beethoven’s farewell sonata from a wheelchair?
And Penelope Cruz, her entrance a pale
and rehabilitative saffron taffeta whatever.  It all
happens so fast who would have time to record opinions?

Her.  She recorded more than 100 CDs
caged in five chains and a bodice.

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