Britta Kallevang

prose poems



I.

they say the water will win and they’re right if they know this lassoing to be true
i’m about to lasso you too to the ring in the sky in people’s hands the sun went by
you never saw that chance to hold the moon to hold the heavy changing of guards or
planets



II.

a bizarre killing of beliefs those photographs with our hands  boxes bend in the
rain make a strange song their flesh kissing mud beneath heavy hungry clouds and you
were there i know what karmic shampoo i used in grade school something strawberry
beneath the porch knowledge at night is me sitting on the bed writing poetry
wondering
    what weather god looks down and what they’ll have me do to say to draw some
diagram maybe alphabet why must i act the teacher they’ll tell me to find it hitting
the bathroom floor the colors and pattern the tiles make what my head takes



III.

open handed words are quite handy to have when green bed silver times spoons roll
through my window we lived in a car on the simple road in books read and called
through some quiet swirled screen to discuss effective advertising the words tingle
as they think of a white framed abyss miss much can’t you get in and can you reply
cat i don’t think it’s a good idea and neither do your words you people



IV.

the opposite of chaos is chaos and no reversing moving places through a colored
screen words dance across like chicken scratching much love a little too soon a
match skidded across sand some car got fired from this quaint to have you next to
me in my drool spool pile where laundry i think vacuum whenever we talk it all
comes up beer at a table so high it’s like standing sitting but we haven’t found a
folded unfolded table you know a patch of undercover spring spray a weathered vine
attempt to deforest the winter frost make a music finger of the one time only sky
and take a second snow



V.

that cat pissed in the sink and let the water boil over it’s not the first time it
will be the last if you see me in the mirror run because i’ll take you down to the
ends of your precipice that ketchup oven idea is what’s so in your mouth to overcome
its last fast run attitude to green covers catch you in your thought came into onion
and danced did in fact drink too many gin gimlets that’s forte too much for this
planet say to the camera something everyone is waiting to hear that this weekend is
the last blasted pat you get the whiff of my oh god i could kill something
    what marks you i cleaned from the sliding glass door to the backyard so we
couldn’t do anything but look and cry that’s where i grew up in weeds mud and trash
thrown over the fence from the ally from the past take and make it mood they want us
to make sensible haiku of favorite fast mind that mind that magic crisp dirt mind a
hot house this cat knows what catches clothes flames what avoids them without reason
without ears without whiskers like whiskers in case the other in case i forgot i
should replace something i forgot



VI.

proverbial angel in a tea house takes its wig and sets fire to the ends of leaf lives
take that down on paper set fire to kill the matter i see snow through you and the
outline of paper clothes soaked in snow makes you disappear don’t climb near the
furnace factory guts exposed to the elements oh sailors oh water around face of earth
oh you in the mirror of the moon you are the peach fuzz of the facade called volcanic
disappointment i grew up in mexico and never ate a burrito when the world ended it
looked like this he said and shot the espresso exposing each atom’s caffeine trap i
just sank my teeth into the table fruit by the door as it snows we never save the day
may it close



VII.

my in and outside space covers clover and saplings by the brook in a white village of
fences we breathe and exhale all day long the tip of your tongue touches since we
cannot see the cold of being lost beneath a bridge of cement connected to towering
walls of cement, cement beneath our feet in a picture of death we dream about ocean
and it’s before seconds build into interminable space seizures of early to bed ladies
we without a flag are in the whole comet touching noses and toes we lie in a frying
pan in our backyard wizardland and everything’s handed to us in a troubled plane we
intercept balls thrown though green turf isn’t space game but bouncing ground to test
the time it takes to collapse that bridge



VIII.

Mithra snipped out of newspaper said regard her up high in regaled blue i wonder
occasionally at the silence of my body.  this morning i am in silent regard of
process.  the ends are inexistent and that’s the trailhead marked up in the forest
the nature i am in the state of regard for a moment in bed this sense of doing things
for those i love and life writing reading expresses my need to live this doesn’t make
sense to me either please don’t worry that you’re lost and i see that i am not a poor
writer in fact i am down under the rest of the world i am zarathustra nietzsche i have
just begun to limbo this rest of the manuscript and it’s ok to need to be still it’s ok
this thing likes to fly away while i hold it closer that is the thing of love i love
this makes me mingle with foreigners and i love that too i love love the winged bug on
my forearm while i write he is perhaps asexual as we spoke of in the soft light of
discussion predetermined nothing freewill is in the free bin of decision and that’s ok
to arrange and rearrange words words have a notion a nothing and it’s strange to see you
here in place with me it’s strange that you’re right next to the state of ocean in me
running through my veins this time the office has its light on at the right time we are
running a cable through the wall we will sit there until we’re done

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