JOSE-LUIS MOCTEZUMA

                           

of immensity


                            we glimpse first



            mountain


                                            &then


water:

                                :the pilings&


                                                                    upswung


pylons


                                            like currents


of pine

                            emeralding



            a crevassed


                                                    wind:



              :billowing


                                          forth


bluer than



                            an inky


oval



in the creviced


                                                            eye


                            of a straggly


knotted


                                          wood:


:a predicament


                                            of god


                    knowledged


                                                          on the cliff


like a palm


                                holding onto


magnitude


                                            the bilious


seacrest


                                the importuned


scatterbrained


                                              unsung






                                                                                self

a movement in the memory and her image
like stained glass pierced by a movement in
the brain which is a screen the screen which is
a glass pierced by a movement in the memory
a movement in the image and time in the image
repeating time in the movement and repetitions
bearing time in repetition and in cadence the re-
petition of a single stroke of daybreak extending be-
yond the frame of a perceptible
death


the 24th frame


is of death its lipless lid like a white-rust lichen on a lick
of snow the phantasmal warmth of smooth
white
stone on
blackstone black
stone on
white
rock and a stillness on sunday morning in limerock
remembrance shadowed by plural denials and lurid rain


the extended wing
of an embrace;
                            as luminous
the frame it
emulsifies with time’s
fragile retardations


                                        what is this image


or outside its camera what is the imagination
conjuring
when the brain goes blackgold
and we wake up
to a screen beating its bloodless heart on the page
of our mind drawn out beneath a sheet of indifference


the image
of a kiss approaching an infinite distance
coming closer and
closer to-
gether
of two mouths two minds in a vat of mercury vapor
sensitive
to the encroaching disintegration
one frame of light
at a time
of the willingness to see
to unsee
the scenic
outlay of a penultimate emptiness its silence
on our
forehead like a projection:


(a field of olive trees
through the fields the hills
a sudden breeze in summer heat
a cherry tree, solitary
the taste of mulberry on a quiet thursday
thursday’s pockets emptied of change
coins like eyelids on the closed eye
of someone
sleeping)

a tennis court oath decreases the probability of the breaking of oaths

when the rubber bladders outnumber the sheer quantity of lilacs in a poem


as when he brought you to a dream of america and you stuttered [     ]

handwritten letters composed to a mask replacing the face’s remnants


on the wall the places we’ve been to wisconsin michigan sometimes

iowa [     ] an iota of displacement like calendars of maidens and meadows


i love you bernadette she writes but the authenticity of time is in its reversal

as unto a typewriter endless sound & seriality in a landscape of strip malls


the memory of a plush koala and phone cords a map of berkeley california

so that time is like an inventory and the actors are lifelike in their likeness


the hallucination of a dark figure in a hotel room on the border of a casino

country roads industrial parks a city square in orinda a graveyard in waterloo


so that time is the taxonomy of dead bright things on the cusp of articulation

you can hear the train in certain spots of time underneath the freeway overpass


transmission towers and the sky opening up to a parade of clouds in trousers

i dreamt of bernadette and clark in the cave of wonders and there was a lamp


what doesn’t happen is murder the figures in the landscape don’t say anything

icarus is a liar the pain of existence is really the monotony of our incoherence


duplexes condominiums two-flats and three-flats georgians bungalows stucco

please for the sake of this letter visit me tell me about corot and constable and

Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a xicano poet based in Chicago. He is the author of a chapbook, Spring Tlaloc Seance (Projective Industries, 2016), and two poetry books, Place-Discipline (Omnidawn, 2018) and Black Box Syndrome (forthcoming from Omnidawn, 2023). His poetry and literary criticism have most recently appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Peripheries, Postmodern Culture, Fence, Jacket2, Chicago Review, Modernism/modernity, and elsewhere.