Joshua Marie Wilkinson & Hoa Nguyen
April 2012
First Round…
(In which Hoa Nguyen responds to two poems by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
then Joshua Marie Wilkinson responds to two poems by Hoa Nguyen.)
JMW
Some Visitant
Attendants were low in
the scenery-ed
encaustic bluing:
so told, so visited
unloved, so crossed
as if weather could vex
that backlit stage in the—-
How many of you is gonna
come by tonight?
I said, how many monsters
of you is going to come to live
here in the action tonight?
* * *
HN after JWM
Some, Visiting
Helpers here and bend down
landscaped in my waking
A sky ceiling A natural tambourine
that rings and rattles
Also: snow
Also: a whoooing
“Unkinged by affection”
One little owl statuette
star-focused on starry love
Count all the
ways to be undone?
We recall the lesser-known cryptids:
Owl Man, Loveland Frog
(Accidentally hitting you with my elbow)
* * *
Tremolo
A net slows in to come shudder here a bit it’s love now
* * *
HN after JMW
A Quake
Captured like the wind in a net Rattle away for it
Meant To
Meant to cover the mouth Silver strands now and a cloak Hair as long as yours undone
Knocks from the Frigidaire her flee to seek San Francisco
Eat red candy hearts
Up from sleeping wet hair Sister could see her sticking
You leapt Her beauty fell
fall of her Helle was her name
Fall into sea irretrievable
Cape to ash to mourn? Her
or was the torch
Did you torch?
Your running
Did you turn when
your sister fell?
* * *
JMW after HN
Arithmetic Mean
Said what we’d become would start us over, six times the fucking’s radius.
It’s that overflooded want we
sought to burn up close to.
Open your mouth to tune your ears.
Fell into a nap after a shower, it was
pouring & the streets went down.
Her name, Gronea or Aisling,
still brought its lovely set of tones
to the neck blood, to blush.
Climbed the rungs of set earth.
Cape to ash to mourn?
To slow to find to feel out with
a parameter’s bankrupt songline.
Did you stay it?
The children threw a pall
of laughter over the back
rows & we wanted to
say it was alright as it wasn’t.
* * *
HN
After the Song
Descend the ladder don’t write it down an octopus with no arms
What lasts
lust and clapping hands
I used to wait
You shaving your face
a wilderness crescendo
petal folds
tremble and I sign
my name It’s my
hand on the page
climb back up again
a chorus of screams
Sing Sing the chorus again
* * *
JMW after HN
Flood After
Copper in the eye to where we want to go to stay to fix us to what’s broken here.
Not enough to lure
the seam of the map
into desire’s little clamp.
I used to wait
up all night for something
to stammer the imagination.
A felled tree blanketed
the shoreline’s rocky ledge
with a listing brine
under the cloudfall
It’s not my turn to be bad.
But could it be my turn
again?
Lift off the wounded one’s shirt.
Pull the needle off the record’s
wobbly perch. Breathe deep, alright?
Then put the needle back upon
the record for a breath to fall out.
Second Round…
(In which Hoa Nguyen responds to two poems by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
then Joshua Marie Wilkinson responds to two poems by Hoa Nguyen. For the second time.)
JMW
Coiled Out
I went to the precipice of wanting to dissolve into spectering there
with you, teenagerly
the haze from
the window coiled
out around the catty knolls I’ve known.
* * *
HN after JMW
Rolled Up
We near the edge petered out there and step off into air How is it that you are naïve
suspended for a moment
before the free-fall
Here: pussy willows
* * *
JMW
Steam to Mist to Vapor to Fog
Misted leavings so cataracted along
your spider wants
into the well, your
lice want the moon
& a net to shore
you look through
the tea foliage to stomp
into bags for boiling
I want the words
I gave you back.
You want the words
I gave you to
christen the moans
of a beforefuck now
& I hold off
* * *
HN after JMW
The Difference is Velocity
Name the ice rime on the glass
insecty or bother
like glass on glass
Crack it now but the mouse
ate through the protective
screen We have to dump
this out and start over again
You weren’t yourself then
Erase the playback
Compose the sonnets
or a sweet heart neck
lace that you did not
garland for the charm
Knock boots you say
& we do
HN
New Poem
Bird strong back and brave see the little magnet as a warning
splash true salty
on the neck
true in the river
where to push
the Greek Athena
and her olive
I have a clean
heart tree
she waved the wing
I bleed this and
it beats true
because it is
fun to be haunted:
a named little girl
the ghost girl
the dead girl & the
doomed film star
* * *
JMW after HN
No Shadow
Thrush here to soak light up through a riverbed’s nimbus
what won’t
just reveal itself
with this shadowy
daylight of Sunday
what’s dirty’s
left to the jag
of the wash where
the bridge finds
a girl ghosting, open
I mark this and
it trues itself to you
because it is
life to be haunted—-
I named
the ghost
not dead & so
undoomed us
* * *
HN
After Sonnet #117
I won’t lawyer love fish for blue crabs with chicken necks tied to string o Love how you plumb and play down the spine of me It’s the bay of my youth I’m drawn to doing leg lifts à la Jane Fonda on the wooden dock Pink bathing suit in frays from a second season fraying and I said from there What you taught me in dark eyes the dream of you like a half- born self of sun and rain (cloud) To braid myself to braid to sunrise myself a still faced one But shoot me not sting with the buried arrow To put among the stars a constellation web of love: music medicine shooting
* * *
JMW after HN
A Seam
I won’t lionize the seam, seemed to wrack what I could without the sky to a hoax o Love how you plumb & re-work the lines I’d thought set in the mess of smudged ivy at the window Now no news can topple the song’s gulf what it throws, what it yields to, what it’s fraying and I said from there or what got told while I pretended to listen I was staring into your face I was learning how to be alive with what I ruined with what I surfaced----said aloud----& so buried arrow To be put among the moon’s penumbra web of sorrow: song pill shoal