a d r i a n    k i e n

 
 

SHE KEPT SOME PAGES HIDDEN IN HER SKIN, THOUGH SHE KNEW NO GOOD WOULD COME OF HERSELF


WHAT DID YOU BRING?








































SHE KEPT SOME PAGES HIDDEN IN HER SKIN,

THOUGH SHE KNEW NO GOOD WOULD COME OF HERSELF
 

*
The excess of nouns.

Whose hands tended the wind
on hands and knees,
blowing on the coals, blowing
on the tender. A flame whispers
translating a forest from the forest.

*
When you are gone.

That the purpose of writing is
chlorine. Some daisies float
upon the fountain's water.

Do not drink this.

I sat in the clearing.
I did not say anything.

*
Though her knees have turned
bronze and the window is always open.

Now this means this —
holding a pine bough into the flame
the sudden crackling of sap
and needles into a final fact.


*
The workers had tied a sail to the bridge.
They were taking the road back to the wind

The purpose of writing is to say,
"I had been here." Though the roof
has become a cloud that pulled her
through the chimney.

*
The general petition. A prayer.

Is she desperate here to be heard
by nothing? The earth is everywhere
so she places a stone in your mouth.
You place a wave in each other's ear.

Nostrils
full of ash.

Where you are no throat can swallow.

The slim marks
of a bicycle after the puddle
on the road. The sun
takes them away.

*
The purpose of writing is euphoria.

If you can find a metaphor that might bewilder
you in a wordlessness similar to your feel.

Feeling out with your tongue
for a curl of hair stuck
to the hotel wall.

The nicotine stuck there.

That a person occurs simply
by reading a register of names. You happen
in a desire of wonder.

next








































WHAT DID YOU BRING?
 

I brought my hands
out of their pockets
though I held them
as awkwardly as crawdads
to facedown your body

I brought my sleep out
into the yard
a family of quail and snow
wreathed around me

I brought white flames
to the desert
to the wind
to the storm of horseflies

the coyotes scampering in
closing circles

I stood on my head and let the blood rush
out of me until I was a blush of nails

I brought gold teeth and lost them
I watched the earth
rip apart beneath me

                                    failing the earth failing

                                    beneath me

and the wind, its whistle through the rusting yellow machines

next

ADRIAN KIEN is a poet living in Butte, MT. He is the author of The Caress is a Letter of Instruction (Slope, 2012), and he has poems forthcoming in the anthology, Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press, 2015).

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