La Petite Zine | Oni Buchanan

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Four Poems
by Oni Buchanan

not knowing enough to shriek when (not knowing when ) they were pulled, a root hair, when the tendrils broken, the network of unfurling towards, and the long lines connecting them underground (oh at first they had only grown vertically from
the dirt, a mere), at first the piercing (a thin shriek as the stem passed through the rub—the dull catch at the cylindrical surround, of the follicles against the grainy remnants) (or a shrill?—eternal, as the metal axis pushed timeless through the iron heart of the earth)—was it—of surface, liminal, for first there was a layer, first, a membrane of dust to host the infinitesimal rupture (the shed skins loosed to granule)—(and the shedder of skins, first?), the upheaval of plane from below, as from a slow lymphatic magma congregating its massive but disparate angers—call it desire—and the stem emerging, forth, and the volume of sky in blue, like a cellophane to enfold in sheer the arriving, to laminate the pushing blade, the shape as ever its confines reach (a hope), as ever, from all sides hearing the loved voice, warm, it sends out ears to the vast dome, emissaries of devotion, though ever the song a liquid of tongues, the slim words dissolving, though ever the pulsing source a fainter circle, distant insignia, and beyond (though the enraptured green makes a fluttering of lashes, the grounded one pleading [again?] )— but the brighter thing like on the other side of glass, a passing arc— And is it not enough to see (though still the great blue insulation enwraps, a tangible between, a fibrous), still—still the tiny peering from beneath the blunt rock as beyond, the beautiful pale curve [as a cheek] subsides, a mask-shard declined from a far dark face— and still the eventual banners urged from the earth, wrung from the earth (as tears, as a gratefulness born withering), end (begin?) unfurling green in the blue day, in the white day, umbrellas for the patio of dirt awaiting—and in the meantime (an unmarked always segmented by the turned and overturned sand) the dirt agreeing on points from the typed agenda, a construct in dots

A Fruit Unraveling
(if aural venturing)

A fruit unraveling shapes a lunar grief—the sphere
spins its shed things away, a leaf turning, a flare
ungirt. The scrap ribbons out then. This, the guilt fare,

a grave if unlit urn, a virulent fang, of granite,
of garnet— The vulgar triune looks on.
A tearful virgin at the rock mouth distributes

a funeral gin, the lunar vintage. (This,
the feral tuning of a lung afire.) The vagrant rune
is a vital rune if rung. The vigilant align their variant fire

on avian turf and commence the fungal rite:
how to unlearn this rut, a flea ring,
how to realign ruin, to feign a virtual run (a fugue)—

They unglue variant fur, lure fungi in a vague trial run,
inventing frail augur for interpretation of the innards. Grace
for the disemboweled, a speaker

of the inner chamber. The triangle a flare turning.
A musket in the dusk
fires for the dark flag, and leaves the fauna rivulet ringing…

A rafter vigil echoes its vain fugal return.
What’s left is mere: a fur granule, the entrail of the still-life
left in an altering gelatin. Vulgar if in nature.

Vulgar: a finite run. We arrive flung, the urgent raving
a vinegar rant in the arena, rage at the angel rift.
The regnant alerting to the pungent imminence:

“If in her unguent arrival in the ungrateful rain, the figural tuner
twists his bolt tighter, a fragile turn…[the plot]” So it was, a fluent aria,
agile, integral, a lunar triage. For no avian reign

shall unveil a vain unfit regular. Naïve girl.
A riven gut-flair proffered its venturing furl.
An angular, an artful rune, fire rung in a vault.

while the outpour, while the spilling tenets of green, the green parting to merge again on the far side of trunks (the still throats cloaked, the cut throats shrouded— [a suggestion, as the webbed root, rhizomatic, ground fine by the pestle, powdered]), for so the young ones loved nothing, could be pulled mute from the earth (and the bluff, the far planets turned silent on their pins, a tethered chariot to drag the moon, dull nub of eraser)—(It: a great wind, It: the prowling approaches with the breath of berries, It: fewer legs, the digits leathered, It: stained, stained, a dull ringing [and as if from within a clouded depth of water, the deaf hearing their name called, the deaf turning toward their name, at last, as from an old life])— pulled, or by lever— for only the old ones could bear, and too the olders shrieked (a once and gone, for in the sever, we all cried out unknowing— all of us tied, and the pain—then silence, and one of us missing who must too have helpless called and none of us heard, having deafened our ears with what rose as if from another throat, as if the dirt yawned up, sobbing, and the sound unbidden covered him and now the taken gone and we not hearing again but waiting, hushed, and the warmth not close enough, never enough, and the bright seeming, seaming, an underfold), and so the left olders clung for the bearing, the single stem fractured, so from the broken: arms: one white flower, hung—(or by coil, by the head-weight dropped and the body, with beneath kicked away, and the catch absent: the buoyant, arms to break the falling— and the catch: a cold sticking of breath, crude halt in the pendulum), and so the olders waiting: each one alone holding its two umbrellas, and the born, the borne thing between, at the gap of seams, in the path of the falling—for no one could see it coming (at the petiole [tipped pedestal] a dropper) and the flower disheveled in a ruffle of white, deeply dyed, a clear distillation: clear on the still lip [for some of them drank], hardened on the hardened lip, as a fine glue of sky—

Summer Solstice

It was hard to hear through the roaring of the wasps.
The dress tighter over the laced corset,
the breath inside smaller at the core.

I found a wing not attached to any bird.
It was lying in the middle of the street,
still soggy with the morning’s rain.

An exceptional calculation of berries per starling.
A startling concentration of exhumations per buried.
And marks on the skin

where the electric spine lay underneath.
Calcification. One day, the moon will fly
out of its orbit, a release

like a snapping, an amputation, and the dead rock
gone. The small voices of the lambs
drowned out by the

machinery rigged for their removal.
I began to think about the ocean.
I begged to think, melodic apparitions

rising out of the static chord.
For there is an ocean with huge stones underneath, the shapes
of dinosaurs. Some days, I can’t wait

for him to come back for me.
This time I will tell him my new name.
If you are proud of me, I will say,

take me with you. Don’t leave me again.

Oni Buchanan holds a B.A. in English and Music from the University of Virginia, an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a Masters in piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. Her first book of poems, What Animal, won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition and was published in October 2003. Her first solo piano cd, featuring the music of Bach, Bartok, Mark Applebaum, and Prokofiev, was released in March 2004. Please visit her website,http://www.onibuchanan.com, for more information and a listing of upcoming solo piano performances and poetry readings.