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Studies--Cuts Shots Takes
by Kenneth Irby ISBN 1-889960-05-5 paper, saddlestitched, 54 pps --$12 |
Beginning at the center, Kenneth Irby digs into his Kansas heartland with force of the perceptual imagination. His Studies make images of life, and bring delight through the affectionate wandering of his attention. Reading topologies and what lies beneath them, Irby is a finder and weaver of the real into the imagined. These poems run jazz-like word trails through an open field, bopping in range of the real, at each turn something new, a surprise. The mind and heart meet head on.
Excerpts from Studies--Cuts Shots Takes
mirrors that reflect backwards of how mirrors should reflect
however long before they give it back
are very thick and no less than green leaves on the
mountain ash
new birdseed bells on the balcony edge
with their twin ties aloft like antennae waiting for days and days
to be strung up
the sapling door at the end of the room
is wound around the wrist too tight
too tight the night wrist bound
the wounds to be protected cut off and let loose above the door
full moon into the grove
the lintel black as night blood or black laurel
does not reverse the image
or the dresser mirror's blue self with the nose curved as the
moon curves
the dark moons under the fingernails that tell black blood
and do not reverse the self let back
do not let back the self let back
but wait as long and thick as leaves and as late
***
the prairie Winter clear bare splendor is so deep
I'm sure I remember North Texas from before I remember
from patch to patch the year is unwoven
and across the gap rethicketed to come
and now remember here: interior with a Norfolk Island pine as
Christmas tree, until Epiphany
and through it a garden in the wall where two figures suspended
are confronted by an angel whose back is to us
or is it at the balcony door where the curtains moire the last
sunlight of the year, and still, and away
the chalk, the oil, the wax of the little chalk
is cray the crawfish cray?
but that's a mistaking out of OE crevise, OF crevice, OHG krebiz:
edible crustacean
made to crayfish, crayfeesh, and craw- and -dad
but gerbh- and scratch and crab and crawl and graffiti and
diagram and draw
and all
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