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Two Poems
by Arielle Guy


The Quickest Way from Point A to Point B Is 

Chat chat point shell. 

The river’s which body; stuns, with silver gun-
Flow. A marked tunnel in the breeze of floating lights. 

Shazam!  

We all know: the drill. Ha ha poo poo tunnel vision Screw you! 

  Is not that how it goes? I remember the burnt apples, Sir 

The recipes for gunfloat.   Breezy wiry pistolfly  

Direct trajectory of flight: luminous bullet line 

Focus is all there is. From the bar to the jukebox and back  

There is none a grove of chickens  

Could bust. 

Weezery bustin apple orchard pickin fight 

“Pick them apples off the shelf/put on yer hoods and run to Hell 

You and your sisters gather round/hear that bubbling growing sound” 

Ha ha hardeeleehahaha 

My papa made a fire and we all sat around it. We sang.  

Aaahhh AaaaOOOhhhh
It felt so good to open up our mouths and sing so loud it tumbled the sky and the benches at the baseball park and the very Heavens we were told are “untouchable.” 

Freak that! We didn’t believe it anyway. We don’t believe everything we’re told. We’re
like that: “ungullible.” 

And proud of it. 
 

Mr. Souter at the school herded us all up to the matches, tied us to gunposts and left us there, seemingly as targets for others of our parents who had a “rage” problem. He said it real sllloooowww like “rrrrraaayyyyge.” By the time he completed the word,  

the guns were loaded 

& the tombs were set  

the definition of hair is inorganic matter, like salt or cotton. 
 

The song is the most desirous of vehicles, said the reddish-blue haze of the gun-
powder. 

Pop pop!  

The orange-red stun of the blast: the pampered soft gray of the gun barrel: the hint of
recoil  

How many shells do we have inside this one floating balloon? How many casings? The lives of the sun,

       the target and the roof 

made plain by love to stand on its rear hoofs and aim 

a lucky horseshoe pillared to the test 

a ladder made right by mortal adjustment; just finding plank 

in the hollow of axis and triangle

its red stomach filled with haze & glow 

the shape of it 

pointed toward Heaven: 

and all its globs. 
 

When drawing a circle take the one spindle of the implement and circle it carefully
around the fixed point of the other.


The Wide and Open Seas 

In the ‘dialogue’
           comprising hope 

Spelled little pieces of web,
        adjusted fodder  

lath and joist, lumbering, water-marks on wood

           (spooled difference between solitude, absence) 

in the truss 

the hidden face of a bluish corpse: 
 


The “tore&mented” wander
                                        the city 

a blessing sail on top of their heads : as if they were saying 

          strip me of my sails 

I am    ‘cudgel’     pull rank on me       & flee 
 


Then she said, the mother, put on your coat it
           will be cold

and the harmful are after 

I am ‘violence’—hidden savagery in boneless shell 
 


          The meals and rats later borne. 
 

Born of rat’s haze strict liquor intake on the ornate dressing table
          A huge red-tinted carafe & two cut-crystal glasses 

   ,looked like wedding rings in the dazzled light, 
 

this is  meals &  tubes  & metros & 

          metropolises * Gotham ~ remember that? 

We are an island a big blue and brown stream a target for boats and trains and
           tunnels and fierce adherence 
 

           tubed and taped to innards resembling arthritic joints 
 

a mother walking alone rusts , styles a tunic in the late night 

           for Patrick to wear : he is her forty-year-old son 
 

‘grime’ ‘glitter’ in the streets there are diamonds in the sidewalk
  if you look closely and walk softly hitting dully with the ball
    of your foot 
 

                     you won’t break them then, you’ll see instead 


water pouring out of the subways out of tunnels in from the
           Hudson   you’ll wear your jewelled bonnet 


           against the glare of floodlights as they open her up again 
 

and look for the swollen tooth