{"id":432,"date":"2012-09-18T02:10:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T02:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=432"},"modified":"2012-09-18T02:10:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T02:10:33","slug":"4-poems-by-erin-j-mullikin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2012\/09\/18\/4-poems-by-erin-j-mullikin\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Poems by Erin J. Mullikin"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE DIVINE AS NUMERICAL
\nSEQUENCES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your verbs come in waves. First,
\nthere\u2019s the antelope\u2019s speed, then the owl\u2019s
\nmoon tilting, then the rush of Chinese junks.<\/p>\n

To call a vessel trash: well, that\u2019s just
\ninterpretation for you. Or how ancient ships
\nbecome obsolete when the seas evaporate.<\/p>\n

Or how analogue & digital are wed
\nto each other & to us. We make a sex film
\nvia 8mm via hand-held via live streaming.<\/p>\n

Of course, not everything depends on language.
\nTake, for instance, how many times we\u2019ve made
\nlove\/just fucked. Recorded or not. Defined<\/p>\n

our character shapes: (we fit.) & I listen to your
\nmath like I am cloistered, like I am a horse
\non fire hurrying across a dry prairie.<\/p>\n

The divine as numerical sequences:
\nthis is what we count on. Systems.
\nSleepings. The fragmented<\/p>\n

motions of our legs forked together.
\nA pair of scissors cutting awake the night.
\nOne. Two. Three. Four.
\n___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

INTERPELLATIVE\/HAILED INTO A
\nSUBJECT POSITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

You. Come here & show me how horses
\nstay clean when the barn is gone.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying for days to determine
\nwhether or not I\u2019m syncretic or bioluminous,
\nwhether I\u2019m postmortem or posthumous.<\/p>\n

An after. Help\/Hello. I am calling
\nto say I won\u2019t be worming my way home
\nanytime soon.<\/p>\n

At the art museum, I signaled you
\nto look at the Bernini. I beckoned & cried.
\nAlarmed, you stood apart, more content
\nwith oils than marble.<\/p>\n

How is it I am dry when you touch
\nmy eyelids, the hair falling around my ears?<\/p>\n

Stoned, I lean into the cave about your hips.
\nI scavenge for lost particles of light,
\nfor drops of water against a forever
\nfalling cityscape.<\/p>\n

These are real-time figures
\nplaque-red for hanging in your file.
\nDocuments of d\u00e9nouement,
\nsilence caught between two Catholics.<\/p>\n

You. I tell you to stay still.
\nSalt when wet maintains its taste.
\n___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

AFTERLOG OF HORSE THIEVES<\/strong><\/p>\n

The telegrams read:
\nCan\u2019t stop here & No going back now
\nStop
\n                  Stop<\/em><\/p>\n

I sit in the city of casual glances.
\nI\u2019m hammering out volumes of text
\n& what\u2019s going to happen, will.
\nThe soft root of his death<\/em>             (1)<\/strong>
\nlike a bird unwinding a ball of string
\nfrom a kite.<\/p>\n

A motorcade full of brain matter.
\nJackie\u2019s pink suit, her round hat.<\/p>\n

Roses. Dallas heat. What concerns me most
\nare the details left for later, revealed in a future
\nsurreal. The telegram read:<\/p>\n

Stop Being So Goddamn Marriageable Stop<\/em><\/p>\n

So she did it with a knife stab to the heart.
\nSo she did it with a deer watching, or a horse.<\/p>\n

The telegram read:
\nShe was climbing out of the car
\nStop    The car was still moving
\nStop<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a playground for the remote,
\nthe undefinable aspects of our living
\namong the fine hairs of carpenter bees,
\nextracting goodness from the indulgent
\nbloodlines. This is pedigree going down
\ninto the annals of subversive dreamlands,
\nthe swivel of clock hands resting
\nprematurely on the sundial of America.
\nThis is a gun & this is a brain & this is how
\nhorses must be punished: by stealing them away
\nfrom every pasture they\u2019ve ever known.<\/p>\n

__________________
\n1 Frank Stanford. \u201cTaking Your Life.\u201d Crib Death.
\n___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

BLACK SABBATH PLAYS WHILE WE ARE
\nFORNICATING IN THE GRASS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say it\u2019s still close to mid-century last century.
\nLet\u2019s say it\u2019s the 1960s\/70s.
\nLet\u2019s say that the grass is dry & full of tiny beetles
\nbut we\u2019re content with being back-side-down
\nin it, watching the sky, feeling the slight
\nmovement of the earth, our finger whorls
\nlike patterns in the clouds, & the clouds
\nare reflected in the water, & the water is as warm
\nas the back of your neck. Let us begin our hymn.<\/p>\n

The time for war & pigs has passed us.
\nWe aren\u2019t exactly human, nor are we always
\nor exactly arrangements
\nforming images in intergalactic mediums.
\nSome of us trade shells as we grow.
\nSome of us stunt nerves, our exactitude
\nfor touching: fireworks.<\/p>\n

Every 20,000 years, the constellations shift
\nthemselves. It\u2019s a natural wonder:
\nhow the universe breaks down, dislocates
\n& relocates its edges.<\/p>\n

When we met at the cusp of the park,
\nI was surprised you hadn\u2019t heard of me before.
\nSerpens, best seen in July. Best seen in complete
\ndarkness, split into two distinct areas
\nof sky. How tiny lights form recognition.
\nTwo stars, congruent, made to mirror.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you & I are those two stars
\n& at some point we must connect across
\na vastness only examined from a distance
\ngreater than the total of our unified selves.
\nA blade, you\u2019ve said before, is but a splinter
\nof the sum. Here we go, becoming something
\nto be seen, our alliance like two trains striking
\nin the dark. A detonation. An absolute horror.<\/p>\n

Beneath us, roots push into the soil.
\nOur backs are stained green. The friction.
\nThe awful knowing that we are collecting
\npigments both unnatural & correct.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________
\nErin J. Mullikin<\/strong> is currently an MFA candidate at Syracuse University. Her works have appeared in such journals as CellPoems, BlazeVOX, and GlitterPony. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, After Milk & Song (South Carolina Poetry Initiative, 2010) and Strategies for the Bromidic (dancing girl press, 2011). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE DIVINE AS NUMERICAL SEQUENCES Your verbs come in waves. First, there\u2019s the antelope\u2019s speed, then the owl\u2019s moon tilting, then the rush of Chinese junks. To call a vessel trash: well, that\u2019s just interpretation for you. Or how ancient ships become obsolete when the seas evaporate. Or how analogue & digital are wed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}