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"a frantic species", "water in the sahel", "at the door, listening"...by Livio Farallo



a frantic species


she walks so slowly you can see the wicker becoming a basket

and then she bends over to pick up a penny but, it’s simply to


reshuffle flesh; to pull gravity from the sky and throw it down.


the night is a vibration full of calm and the candle remains

solid though you breathe on it in spasms.


she wants you so badly you can hear it in her crackling hair.

her brain is full of gargling sounds and her hands offer you a cup

of smiles: a bowl of tadpoles pulling each other like lashes closing an eye.


she waits for you where elephants shake their heads at memories of

mastodons;

where letters form words at the edge of a silence spongier than language.


and you lift her dress because her pockets are empty as a waterfall

and she begs you not to weigh her down.



water in the sahel


in the vernacular

of hegemony there

are mountains

spanked to white dwarfs;

cutlasses dulled

to

butter and

the button

that sealed

my

lips was a toothless curse.


i made a

promise to forestall

witlessness, to

ingratiate a species

not

convinced

of

extinction. it was

thought that a consequence

of

stupidity was to winnow blood

pressure

so a

heart had no reason and

laid flat.

but i can’t ship darkness

to you with

its

heavy

feet;

in air, it is simply

a hindenburg that

refuses to burn.

and all day long,

the consolation of a slow heaven

sails out to a sea looking

for

handouts freer than horse-

weight on the

old plains. consciousness

is

what

i promise you; where confection

finds a suitcase

to spill alcohol;

where tiny legs

of crickets

are so quiet

in their truth.



at the door, listening



and sun comes in

sprinkling its lungs in river fire;

crusts baked

in wallpaper, screamed in disease.

and i wait for you, myriad in what

i want to

say: cascades thrown as if they weren’t

waterfalls.


one impenetrable rock formation; one

army of silhouettes yawning without

fatigue or outlines.

and i’m still a disembodied ear

at a gravesite

sniffing cut roses

through rain.


circled by wind, an alp

is a small hill.

a movement is an orchestral

arrangement. a dry riverbed

scraped by

a harsh word or two is really

a thready cloud offering

its wrinkled skin. and i can still wait

for

you as a redwood

finding the first foot

of morning in a desert wiping

sweat from its face. even if a

crocodile is hungry as a blizzard it

can never take down a wildebeest in penny lane.



anna waits


it was the end of an hour.

untimed. echoes

of no particular

ethnicity

running out of caves speaking promises,

articulating gestures

they had never bothered with

before.

it was emptiness and capacity;

bone and water.

if you’d seen the day of the triffids

it was blacker and whiter

and less real than the plants. there were cowbells

without mooing; milk without cows. and

chandeliers of broken cobwebs

tinkling out of tune.

i wanted to talk to you

even though listening

was archaic in that fog,

and

flames

crumbled in a watered hiss. you

wouldn’t

have

appreciated my voice anyway,

as long as it dragged in the air

and no one laid down a carpet

for a

picnic. trees popped open

like baskets dropped

from

threes storeys. there wasn’t

a smell

or a pastry for the wind to linger on.

no xylem and phloem to

carry

water, and i still wanted to talk

to you. i still thought

butterflies were free.

“a-han-a…. i want you

know now…….” that

sundays will never come

home. they won’t have to

as long as days have names

and the sky threatens us

with sagging eyes.

“go with him.”

the sun will only make a desert

of you and when

sand flies, the flames

are deafening.

“girl before you go now……..”

passing motion detectors

to enter a beanfield, measuring

acreage

with lipstick –

a ship’s galley

spills

more love than beans.

a minister argues

more

catholicism

than the lightbulb

above

his head. “just one more thing, girl……”

ireland

has its sword of light

wrenched from a bog; fairy tales

falling not too

far away.

one man

pulled in a donkey cart,

hands chained

behind

his

back.

don’t listen to me. “go

with him.”



they’ll tell you


the fanfare of midnight is a

sound squeezed

from the sky

where streets

are wide and no one screams.

they’ll tell you cranes

lift

nothing without a loss of gravity.

cranes won’t even fly.

and if i listened with every sensory

organ

i might hear deserts pleading

to the sun. they’ll tell

you

that

dusk

baking into dark is just

a memory

struck with

cement, or

a shovel turning over soil. but i know

my heart makes more noise than

all the

picture windows on the horizon

and each bullfrog adds a dollop to the thunder.

they’ll tell you persons

named smith

can’t explain

night and day

and a seal’s bark is more precious than both.

so when you see

a bush bleeding leaves in

summer,

you would have to think disease. you

would

have to breathe without purpose

to feel

the weight of your lungs and

swear to only pick

ripe fruit.

they’ll tell you, you can’t

really sleep on a beach

with all that sun and crabs

that move like moles

under your back.

those umbrellas are really so many

mushrooms. ever hear

of the death cap?




Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at

Niagara County Community College. His stuff has appeared or, is

forthcoming, in Helix, Rabid Oak, Ginosko, Otoliths, Panoplyzine,

Brief Wilderness, Triggerfish and elsewhere.

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