S. YARBERRY

I SHALL GIVE YOU FIVE WORDS FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY! 


A-Horse-Named-Slipper 

Stolen from the beauty of all that
there is no etymology for
what will bring this language
together—it refracts, the language,
the sounds, broken bottles  
slipped the mind of the dumpster.
Delicate foot, delicate hoof clops
down the city’s bright pavement.  

Vortex 

A name given to what we want 
to get inside. Center (not 
Centaur, but the middle of things). I
wrote down 
   sweet brush of chaos 
because I love you! I wrote it 
down, down, down in the
vortex. The vortex is always
the poem (here we are inside it).

Sorcerer

This word runs through the street—
empty, ablaze, and singing soft relations,
gold doors, flickers of light in the foyer.

Field-of-Clouds

Years ago [Cue: a memorable fancy: 
inside an airplane [all I dream of now—
planes and the one I’m sleeping beside 
with me, flying]! ] I saw the cloud 
of not what it ommitted nor what it 
meant. The cloud, its shape seemed 
suddenly apprehensible, as in sensual, 
a way of loving the world not knowing
why, how, yes, should. 

Mirror-Secret-Red-Peony 

A trope is nothing other than falling 
in love with repetition! Buy 
your girlfriend flowers that are 
metaphorical—in the sense that stars
are always metaphorical [un-
purchaseable; henceforth! anti-
capitalist [?].] Look at yourself,
you’re 265 years old and still 
breaking hearts, tenderly, 
slowly, all those good ways—with words,
words, those secret mirrors.