Variant Tongues of the Conjunctive Application

By Felino A. Soriano

Acknowledgements

I gratefully recognize and thank the editors of otoliths, Liquid Imagination, The Toronto Quarterly, Fragile Arts Quarterly, and American Poetry Journal for publishing some of the poems presented in this collection. For Duane Locke, Joseph Goosey, Peter G Res, Andrew Taylor, Gail Gray, Kane X. Faucher, Ray Succre, David Wolach, Adam Henry Carriere, and Lars Palm, for their

enormous gifts of specialized poetry.

—after Louis Ferreira’s End of Day Crystal cylinder Cyclops settles in the nestled fashion wrinkles occupy the aging skin: Moon many times ignored glances from its single socket skull downward finding refuge in the canoe standing stagnant on the lake’s aching lumbar. Ripened man gallops in acclimated hunch grasping too the canoe with eyes’ promised use until life leaps into a twirling smoke dance, the artistic endeavor death provides prior to complete ascension. Forest nude though clothed in the fabric of multicolored leaves. Nude, the synonym with alive’s unneeded recognition to become aware or unaware. Old man’s home throwing light toward night’s dark skin from windows’ slingshot ability

to reinstate day’s natural disposition. Old man’s atmosphere monopolizes the beautiful juxtaposition: water and trees spreading their skin taught around the skeleton of existence he is given daily as dusk reinvents a language predestined to articulate specialized harmony.

—after George Bellows’ Emma at the Window Content with gaze toward the brush’s inability to articulate absent shape, ascertain your mind-wanderings attached to the hand of childhood, riding the wind’s altered back dressed in Sunday’s brand of fashionable attire. Or content, as the stillness symbol, needed to become silent atop a wall’s vertical world, parallel with the bushs’ quiet in their green tint and photographic perfection. Your hands resemble an epoch long before work became the fashionable epitome of mans’ physical posit, attached to the lap, recalling birds nesting royally within an oak’s unprecedented presence, wind’s colors breathing zephyrs into feathers, releasing colorful transition from sitting to aerial ambulation: What will your hands create, going unnoticed inside a reflection parallel with a woman’s natural, uncalculated refinement?

—after John Brack’s The Bar Gathering unlike the phony, the personalized posits, the sand grain size impersonal anti-consociations found

layered on the back of a drifting, broken glass pleasantry. Men visit the bottom browned edge of cognac’s belly, pretty mouths forming unarmed throat bites from copacetic, maturated libations, systems of yen akin to a desired nakedness standing still openly beneath the bartender’s understanding stare: she, the sole smiling, unintoxicated, style of serenity unscathed between spells of refills, closing the ringing mouth of a register’s educated function. Sweater mirrors awakened tulips residing softly, standing against a beautified lean. Where do the men go, subsequent to the tongue engaged in swirls of inebriating conversations? She’ll return, the smiling, the serving, the sole rendition of other purpose entering the door of maladaptive consumption.

—after Richard Prince’s Untitled After dark the tongue’s telegraphed lie levitates a star’s vertical call toward

smiling gild,

echo in the finding ear swirling amid wind’s token compliment. Day needn’t awaken nor attribute its silent absence solely fend of recognition of the myriad magnitude measured by the crying memories, lingering in a rest on the tongue’s next to come.

—after Ronnie Landfield’s Journey to the East Following the fledging newness (imagine lovers’ first pre-stare [pre, the naturalistic attire calling claim among subsequent lips, fanned] soon to envelop selves of silken embrace near first cross. Courses taken alive via proof of dragonfly’s microscopic blur. Arriving semblance familial break apart saddened journey of a wishing bone’s predetermined focus.

—after Jackson Dembar’s Image 5 Flame became human. Began to form emotions. Fear. Its body beautified. A leaf yellow mirror of a calling down sun. Near its center, a womb. From the contour of reactionary heat, beauty became the birthed revelation.

—after Yuriy Shevchuk’s Jazz Miles Davis 2 The running water of esoteric solos distinguished different formulations, intimate emotions— embracing altered grace gone in the windy breath of afternoon’s cleanings. A caressing care con toured toward

relaying physical grandiloquence garbing

reliant listeners with ornate baths of the barely visible striations. Distant, near the faint interpretation of nearly lost to absence, the heard finalizes human contact, musical bodies lying down in meadow calm sheltered within the human tone tongued from the reaching forth tantara.

—after Eric Aho’s Long Yellow The yellow S curved elongated etch on tiger leech’s shimmering physique analogous to the field of smiling suns born up from the soil’s embracing threads, gesturing. Avenue of landscape where the crawling dangle slowly below acrobatic avifauna launching into saluting formations higher than the thought of cease can ascertain thus, infinite or simile of echoed ensuing brandishes itself over into repetitive showcases day’s author refuses to erase.

—after Matt Brackett’s Threshold Door’s grand attire. Obese opening, occasion to gander a specialized fortune, anti-cookie broken fashion. Couple, man and mate, their lives a distance complicating mathematical understanding. Their wants, a gnarl wishing return of sporadic rainfall, too dry to design clothing to clothe a moment meant of happy alterations. Forward step become. Next, an intertwining will befall, life together until the door of allegorical death swings its breath of unraveling exit.

—after Michael (Corinne) West’s Poetic Structure Silvered s l i d i

ng an aerial convert once startled an uneven show balanced on the scale -rise with dawn’s pet rooster: trembling a leaf circumference (here, circumference, data of circular come backs bound to routine the mind ceases to release) Xeroxed demonstrated same in conceptual name is revolution language returns across spectrum totaling artistic

landing.

—after Ruth Durland Horton’s Untitled Abstract We watch the wanted blend a created creature form itself interpretational grace, freed jazz assembly of birds of the congregate arrowhead forth hitherto realized a distant locality.

—after Francis Butterfield’s The Embrace Lovers embrace tongues, body lingo form of verbalizing hands, absent revelations. Assembled, a store bought model careful to showcase unaltered, true to directions human minds define among dissipating Eros.

—after Joan Mirós Bleu I Shadow of my selve’s self, cries a loud laughter, avant-garde trust fund Velcro sound segregation. Twice before, two-body halves mirror-gray wholeness near facelift difference, altered physical surname. Leap but before ensure quivering, this ensures human blood postulates pressure-widening veins. Excess like weight hooked on pant’s waist tightness too late of oracle visitation prophecy fell toward sleep left waiting in worthless’ several collocations.

—after Patrick Ngoho’s Introflection A bag of mut i lated spines, running into self-echoes carving

harm inside reservations of the predetermined habitat. The image of contour is validated

horror. This familial tie to corpses strewn, a tossed whereabouts

never forms relaxation techniques of the deep-breathing methodology.

As the bodies believe in mending, impossibility hand makes structured reality, based on Sci-Fi films’ clever endings of why watching excavated un returnable time.

—after Kenneth Roland’s Lovely Rosa The V of her smile, so seductive, symmetrical, layered (lying flat, then contoured) atop cornea’ s multilayered, esoteric predilections. Her age now resembles bursting bloom,

an ascension from the need to mature in any scope outlined by the intellectuals

at university’s spoken monotone delivery. Forthcoming epochs designate interesting imagery. As her smile becomes an intuition, watchers can determine her mood sans the tongue’s unraveling, carving fissures of fixated gazes, her beauty is the lovely attribute interpretations concede to earning faith-driven, unexpected livelihood.

—after Joe Novak’s Redemption Philosophy of self, of momentary transport askew dichotomy between the mirror’s masterful portrait, and the secondary language of physical

displeasure. This is the causation of metaphoric hiding. Much effort of the focal sense building neighborhood of questions of idolized features, forthcoming bowing toward the forgotten importance. As we incorporate the many hands givingand tootaking we can intellectualize the fingers of the many body-broken fences, needing mending and renewal often more intensely than what the mirror etches earliest after the rooster’s serpentine alarm.

—after Jack Reilly’s Notion Acquired taste, malfunction triangle of devotion, ambiguity, trust. Relational outbursts write their dictionary of despair. Holding in modal choking resuscitation backtrack only lives in the perfect mold of relevant and fully comprehensible hindsight.

—after Mandi Ziino’s Heart Peaceful, the eyes of the heart’s blink a fluttering soreness, hours of memory-revisits. This coherent act in night’s sleeping corner, curled amid rising smoke imagination plants as part of fantastical cultivation. Next, as the human delays life’s forthcoming potential, death is the voice tattooing its fixated weight onto the present at bedside, renaming the alive with reverent echoes rising to meet in intersecting screams.

—after Jacquelyn Tierney’s Untitled (Black + Gold) My realization is realized regarding spanned divergence of collocation, words of the physical pronunciations and devotion to legends planted into psyche’s multilingual dexterity. Fissures’ roles beautified, unlike the pimpled earth in some positions exertion running from reflectional voodoo, claiming rescue has dashed to save self from falling into bellies of unnecessary constraints. Near the swallowing of past environments, the new is appreciated of the contoured collages formed to decorate illusions found crawling toward exhaled realizations. —after Eric Garingalao's stain static strain The deepening wound has a face of reappearance. Subtle healing talks a soft focus into the ear of the scab’s meditating mending. Behind this fence of motional creatures, wings form themselves a near-origami rendition of ersatz ascension, their inability to scan from mountain shoulder-height, the transparent focus for a mood to dip its biggest toe into a pool of self-inflicted sorrow, obstructed ambulation. The causation of constant grounding, of reappearing etchings

on skin’s damaged cells is the hand of vertical clawing, the nails tiny daggers examining the structure of inconspicuous self-injurious behavior. —after Joyce T. Macrorie’s Gordon’s Garden V Window, vocalizing release, entrance leans into spatial activity, a teeming whirl of active notions, masked with faces of functional human beings. The window heaves its predicated web, magnified toss from vantage points’ causational methods. Web wears itself atop skin of the nameless, unfamiliar altered ability, outside of window’s invariable monotony, allowing the wind’s feet to leave prints where the sill’s spine connects with the spark saluting a close for an evening’s relaxation.

—after Richard Tuttle’s Space-is-Concrete (14) A backyard’s space wears a flower-print dress accolades for scents of the shifting disposition, smiling. Too, space hangs midflight; the dangling spin of a horseshoe’s other sport, tossing its fabricated U onto the spike of a pit partially filled with alabaster sand. Space resembles the child, running toward gestures day promotes within angled flame, hiding from the numbers another repeats quietly, symbolizing

game beneath questions randomly displayed nursing on the answers’ bodily remains. —after Dale Ziegler’s Generations Their interactional reaction resembles generational difference familiar among theory of syncopated sound. Three embouchures timed in jazz-rhythm’s accolades ranging from the simple smile merging into ovation’s standing performance.

—after Stefan Maguran’s Brainstorming We as thinkers of solitude, of achieving loneliness are amid the asked to find the hidden the exact alterations of day’s many fortunes. As we unroll before us hands that hold minutes’ constant changing, we delve silently tongue-lead, positing requirements

ideas unfold into the heirlooms thought remarks as ways to function securely. —after Stacy V McClain’s Let me play Let me play and hear the voice of my movements circulate in synonyms.

—after Piotr Antonow’s The Conversation Often obvious as in an argument excavated emotional shadows turn darker gray (mimicking the swell of fear throttling, bruising life’s topographical protection) living farther from the body’s inconsistent happenings. Their backs east and west facing tribulation with silence understanding this brand of voice is the screaming symptom of saddened sears

of miscommunication. —after Linda Berkowitz’s People on Benches Asking of ourselves look into the eye of dangling distance, understanding logic of elemental loneliness. Each step toward this foreseeable function, distance moves in its satirizing scamper, and those here, sitting atop the horizontal palm of a bench’s open hand, will never become a layer of intertwining light, looking back into the watchers’ eyes, understanding their yen for closeness will never be a fathom of realistic realization.

—after Charlie Ward’s Billie Holiday Her smile her paradigm of performance unravels braids of tightened worry of the lonely lyrics leaping from splintered splays of a tongue’s illustrated harm.

—after Mindy Newman’s An Autumn Pattern An avalanche of interest hidden within delicate palm-rest of contours teeming in air’s available mystery. Each upon an annual truth, Autumn visits for months most needing reflectional tones of womb’s anniversary warmth hiding earth in triangular tomes written into the eyes, leaving with patterns of trusting gaze watching of the whereabouts color slants most silently without wonder if their shadow maneuvers in the echo of vain.

—after Gabriel Mendez’s Alone in the dark Alone in the perched version of stillness the crow holds branch’s hand near the exact replica of a child’s squeeze through fear of the mother’s grateful, indented wrist. Crow watches, wears rings of hunger around oscillating neck, a necklace of hunt leading with scent leaping from the iridescent scamper a mouse returns in

aware, wide awakened release. —after Randi Antonsen’s Hidden place Of image inflated rise massaged by center of want, corpus mellow dainty hold its wondering unknown casual evidence the mind relays passionate deafness.

—after Rabi Kahn’s Moon and fiancée Various equivalents talk to the selves some worship on bludgeoned knees. One lights sky of devotional peering ebony opacity of an eye’s quotient of abundant open. The other wears wind as Summer dress walking among women of stuttering stars. Which

is the relevance unknowable hands hold across the table of day’s numerous hours. —after Janel Bragg’s Lonely Ride Home Her holding, her silent holding a horizontal gray-cold bar on public-personal bus hides moments-before’s rush to enter four-wheel facilitator. Home is a flash from the agony of self and shadow, waiting is in her eyes waiting to enter a second entrance, one of self’s scents

mimicking a smile blanketing an entire familiar landscape. —after Joe May’s The Girls They play and sit wearing amusement on tiny moments fitting against their toddler range. Sitting to interpret with crayon hands. What ends is manifestation of comfort, of imaginations’ tribute toward assuming reality of adequately aged ability.