you have the new hide and the old chain
DESCRIPTION
Ig Zjoot's first chapbook, which he wrote on vacation in Montana which was really cool. He hopes you enjoy the poems.TRANSCRIPT
Wyoming (Prelude to Montana)
Maybe it's the cows,
twisted by science
into hideous monsters with
too many limbs
and bright lips
that whisper uncomfortable truths
or maybe it's the clouds of pink
and swooping and gloss
and their sickly wads
or maybe it's the bird
of each fence post
that tries to sell you a telephone
or peck out your lungs
but something about Wyoming
makes me want to be a ground
or a warhorse full of light
that heroics into bluest space.
Poem for Early Morning
In this valley
I am shimmering with angry and joyful fur.
The grass is so soft that it can rip off your arm
and you won't even be mad
and your arm will mix with the river.
You will be happy for your arm and it's new life in the river
among the fish and the dead monarchies.
You will want to climb the mountains,
but you cannot.
The mountains aren't real.
They are just some milk cartons I left there.
You will want to drink the water but it is not real either.
The valley is not real.
The ground is not really there nor is the sky.
Only the juggler is real, tied into his pole
singing of pigs.
Bears
Inside my head
there are a lot of little bears.
With their little hammers and chisels
I can feel them building little towns
and little walls out of little rocks
that I left for them in my ears.
Maybe they will go to war with each other
or maybe all of this will subside.
Either way I just wanted you to be aware of what’s going on with me right now.
Wizardry
I smashed the green orb
and crawled into the blue one
like we discussed.
In there, all of my downy yellow feathers
transformed dutifully and efficiently
into earthworms.
They are giving me some useful spells.
Montana House
Everyone is getting together in the big house on top of the hill.
We are discussing what to do about the water,
which refuses not to have legs.
It is not present at the meeting
I excuse myself and head for the bathroom.
Inside, there are some foxes gathered around a campfire.
They are speaking mostly in Icelandic
I am pretty sure.
To the south there is a vast amount of trees.
To the east, there is a small cottage.
Inside the cottage,
a normal egg cooks in a frying pan and it is beautiful
and it is unlike anything you have ever seen.
At the exact moment it is finished cooking,
the spaceships take the cottage away with them
and upwards and all the trees collapse.
The audience cheers.
It is all very confusing for me.
Big Sky
We are all in the same boat
these sad townsfolk and happy I
and it is very large.
Large enough to have its own bodies of water
and its own boats
and its own trees.
Some grand illusionist
has convinced us that this boat
is floating in some sky and not an ocean.
A boat trapped in a boiling sky.
Desert trees against an empty sky
A red egg hatching in a very black sky
We cannot catch the rabbits and the deer
with our silly traps.
The blue rabbits in a friendly sky
The pink deer in a sky of finality
Poem For Late Morning
In the forest,
the animals have important business to attend to
They have important meetings to go to.
Important animal shoes to make.
This requires a large amount of invisibility
and cloud-like movement
and the occasional execution.
I am a ladder with no paint on.
The ladder emerges
from a pot of boiling red mud.
It flies horizontally over a forest.
There is a bird of prey on one of its rungs
giving it directions.
I am forced to concede on the elk issue.
Like you said, you are not an elk.
Having seen a real elk
I don't know what you are.
Really, I don't think I ever thought you were,
just the question had handed a pair of scissors
to the silence and it made me nervous
People/People
1.
In the Sears
a washing machine pops up
from its hole in the ground,
hands me a packet of seeds labeled "people"
I plant them out back
in what the refrigerator tells me later
is poisoned soil.
It is ok though.
The seeds turn out fine when I check on them later
businesswomen and firemen like normal.
There was one odd child
with translucent skin, but he ran away.
2.
In The K-Mart
a geyser of people erupts
They are all wearing clothes
of different colors.
Some are wearing hats.
There is one boy who wears
a bicycle on his shirt
It is whispering
Its eyes are clear
Its arms are radiant
It is whispering
It is whispering
Mammals
A bison evaporates
venomously at an eagle.
An eagle melts
at the cavernous bison.
In the midst of it the stapler cries stop this
and dives into the river
and contortionists into dead pine trees
where they feel very elk.
Weather
You have the new hide
and the old chain
and neither one is a flower
and both are a rainstorm.
It is a sweet rain
that erases frogs.
There are even blackberries in it.
So many leaves have been caught
by your sticky skin.
Poem For Early Evening
1.
I am in the water
reading Jacques Prevert.
A fly comes into the water.
I brush it away with my hand.
My wet hand makes the book wet
to my chagrin.
2.
Me and the water
are in a fly,
reading Jacques Prevert.
Jacques Prevert stands there as the fly disintegrates.
Then walks into the trees.
3.I am in Jacques Prevert
with a fly and we are both
reading the water.
We go into the water,
me and the fly,
and build some houses down there.
4.
Jacques Prevert and the water are in me.
The fly joins them.
None of them are reading anything.
Soon the houses come, the trees come
a deer comes
and she brings some wild grass
and the clouds come and the children they come
and the men and the women they come
and the brewery comes.
Later snow comes
and it brings some people with skis.
A lake comes to my left arm.
A bear comes to my legs.
Some kind of very faint important planet
comes to my head.
Psycho Fishing Chapter One: How to Scream at Trout
Everyone is a clock.
I am only eyes no the top of a head
I am the leather strips on this lamp of trees.
The air could be said to be bashing this lamp into my skull.
My skull could be said to be a rhinoceros.
I am a literal rhinoceros
who has climbed onto a bridge
made literally of chewed gum.
Aesthetically, this is very nice.
That is what all of the fishermen on the bridge think.
They are attacking me literally with lamps.
The air is literally setting all of them to 7:08 pm
and laughing which makes me very nervous
because I don't know what that means,
but it seems pretty important
I do have to congratulate the pamphlets;
the scenes of nature are pretty nice like they said.
Now I feel bad for not believing them.
And shredding them and making them into shoes
that then combusted.
Psycho Fishing Chapter Two: Using Your Enemies as Bait
In a puddle a basket exists
very slowly and does nothing else.
Above it, a trout is rocking back and forth.
Below it entire cities have escaped notice.
They put fish in the basket every so often.
The basket could not be described as receiving fish.
It does nothing.
They found me in the basket once.
I had fallen quite a long way
and had memories only of wax.
They are building statues of me now.
Daily I tell them please to stop.
It has started to be more of a begging.
I don't know the coordinates,
otherwise I could tell you where to send the missiles.
I am sorry.
Poem For Late Evening
In the evening,
I am a normal sized pig
in a town where everybody has accepted
the four mysterious holes in the sky
and moved on with their daily lives.
Suddenly a windshield named death
flits cautiously down and perches on my head.
It offers me a bug.
I say, no thank you
I already have this bowl of tulips.
Up on the mountain
there is a an eggplant
covered in bees.
The mountain is actually your face
and the eggplant is your nose.
Prophecy (Postlude to Montana)
Everywhere, there is a tree-husk
Filling her mouth with cotton
and standing on a rock
These are things that hover
and point left.
Follow them on your bicycle.
They will bring you to the cliffs that you need.
The cliffs that have been given to us
by carrots
The sun that is attached to your string
will hit the other sun
and the red door will open to horses