Stephen Guy Mallett

Marinus’ Life of Proclus

Any two dots form limbs of creation, Sarai folds cloth in her lap,

this dram hints at fruitiness, like the sea, reads the label.

Addend Bataille: the animal is in the world like warm water

is in cool water, I am one of four interceding on Norea’s behalf,

what is are patches on what we cannot see, I am less,

somehow, but not somewhen, somewhere less than heresy 

& more than orthodoxy, form is a contranym, like cleave,

or that when the dishes get done the morning dove

& the evening dove are the ghosts in the set

in most one-electron universes. The monad is a dyad

is a triad. After one or too many spiked 

Arnold Palmers, I embrace my reflection in the long river;

I chase the hen around the yard; I am bound in a rose

quartz bridge, wax image, pregnant pause; mere clerical error;

the eagle eats my liver over and over even after

I found the fire I thought I was supposed to,

Lares in dogskin watch over me as I snooze

under the scramble crossing. Flowering precedes growth.

Spit on the light bulb of a dandelion & it shatters into a future tense.

Rings Hpllow (sic)

 I’m not sure what it means

when an acorn cap’s circuit

breaker skin gets pushed

in all the way       In the end

we grow to hate the strait paint

makes for its home       A pleat

between the blank particle

board etchplains a lowercase

o might prefer decenderless

but for what could have been

had gravity stayed natural

numbers on butcher paper

       If p then cue opining on

how curtailing the tailed thing

the vowel became becomes

a matter of grave importance 

S.G. Mallett is the author of the full-length poetry collection Disparate Logoi (Alien Buddha Press) and the chapbook A Brief History of Scarecrows (Back Room Poetry).