circuit

aim lights a quick fuse
which momentum ignites
wisdom swings a wet broom...

lucy meskill

Seven Wonders, or Notes Taken At A Party

one: Every single lustrous layer of varnish, vanished.

two: One room too small to do anything but stand for a moment in.

three: Each stringer, tread and riser absorbs the light, fantastic.

four: Pictures on a shelf, married pictures on a shelf, and multiplied tenfold.

five: One room so hot, that even the empty glasses are sweating.

six: One room so cold, that every warm cookie on the plate is shivering.

seven: The echoes of life so securely pocketed, and corrugated, that each bit of condensed matter smoothly suspends the passage of time.









image from page 177 of "Boston, a guide book" (1910)

orrery

blue plate swirling, sky

green bowl teeming, earth

yellow cup rising and setting, sun

all traversing the heavens

courtesy of 

the hinged elbows 

of a hungry god

array...

There are angels in the underbrush
there are prophets in the trees
they dance with waving wanderlust
upon four windy seas



lucy meskill

pilots...

the bee told me

just where to stand

to see the universe 

unfold

the envelope told me 

just where to read 

to hear the mountain

groan

the leaf told me
just how to turn
to make gravity
let go

the pebble told me
just how to splash
to glide into the
flow



Lucy Meskill

advance...

for pigs languishing in crates
I push the world for you
for cows who roil in filth
I push the world for you
for ducks who are force-fed
I push the world for you
for sharks who are de-finned
I push the world for you
for dogs forced to fight in pits
I push the world for you
for elephants de-tusked
I push the world for you
for goats shoved out of towers
I push the world for you
for chickens ground to death
I push the world for you
for bulls who are made to fight
I push the world for you
for insects poisoned by avarice
I push the world for you
for every thing that suffers
at the hands of human greed
I push the world, in words,
for you...

lucy meskill

image: Coruscate, lucy meskill, 2012

that great tribe

gratitude for the profusion

of necessary momentary fragments

whose small composites find strength in union

to take lazy possession of the soil

wafted washed dropped or flung

as the quickening of ovules

downward, with heavy rains

from the overhanging bank, flood

the only inducement offered

from the dissolving rain is respite

for these less than weary travelers
in the sweet red-scented sublime clay

Lucy Meskill