I.INVOCATION: an entrance


Movement often gives light over to shadows –

pulls itself against ivory walls –

to collect tusks, they said,

we must first collect:

sandbaskets, dry rot, plaster,

centipedes. Collect them

under seagull canopies sometime

before cellular division.


Here, enumerated, count to seven.

1.It blew my mind when it caught on fire. Birdie Africa, where are you? I went searching for my roots, and several trees ago, saw my name planted, figure-eight style, under barberry vines.

oooINVOKE ----

2.Bernadine Dohrn shouted at the media, “twenty-five dollars for members of bourgeois media; two dollars for independent media!” Lined up in rows, they fled to Chicago. All of the stores staged with police-caliber actors. Stop the bomb you call them in and tell them to leave history several weapons, leave time unharvested.

3.in the distance, I hear ship bells breaking waves over Mullica Seashore, the foghorns dismally project stillness as light makes day, O Milarepa songs, I see simply bardo, your third eye, bruised

4.A sad leap. Quicken through skies. He sat in the garden and pretended to be Adam. Told Catherine to pretend to be Eve. Enitharmon broke her wedding ring, side-saddled to the groom garden piecemeal, rusty silk flowers changing colors – silver, lilac, marigold

5.I won’t die out won’t die out sudden sages bear ripe vines.

oooooo EVOKE ----

6.3684 sunset eighty-two much too much snow fifty-four sirens o so sick of sirens wailing don’t know fifty-three (53) moving moving buy cadillacs buy dresser drawers

7.flying clouds. If you hear your families sacrificing animals because of your death, retreat. Look to the east – if you see a large city made of glass, do not go there. Fortune away. If to the North, there is a spring and it seems the only spring forever, do not go there. Do not journey Westward, especially if there are two hills and six valleys. To the South, there is a beach strewn with marsh-azaleas and algae trees. It is there where the Republic lounges dazedly watching for the turning of torture to liberty – beyond the beach, though – toward the ocean pulling itself over to the sky and back again until both ocean & sky were one and two became more than three – more than seven, unenumerated.



-Debrah Morkun


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