Illustration, detail: Sarina Brewer, cover art Fancy Beasts ©Milkweed Editions

CHOSEN FROM FANCY BEASTS BY THE MAGAZINE OF YOGA STAFF

Website Milkweed Editions

Author’s website AlexLemon.com

Related post Practices: Alex Lemon

way out west

A hard rain will show the secret
In the architecture of bones
Much better than sunlight believe me
Or fractures I promise you
So soaked T-shirts drip like a true skin
While we walk laughing
Down the beach & after the drops stop
Pocking the water the tricks
That play on the growing green then
Bluer waves xxxxxO blackshark & tigerbelly
Out therexxxxxxxxxBelieve mexxxHow I wish
I could wrap everything I see
In cellophane & keep it forever in the freezer
This fizzing pier lifexxxxxxArches painted
In a crown of muscle men & clown faces
Red coral lips & russet mustaches
All the finest whisperings of deeper-than-just-flesh
Each sunset something out there
On the horizon looks like it’s waving
An arm going under & downxxxxxVanishing
Into the watery sweepxxxxxxxxxxx& even in
The complete black after
Everything’s slipped from the world’s shelf
A sort of gravelly piano rails
Over the palm tree’s hidden speakers & though I know
Some things believe me
They are so few & stars are burning
Mouths in the skyxxxxxxxxBelieve
Me & the desolation of legs outlined
By a wet blue skirt leave
Never enough time to explain

tick tick tick

The most troubling thing is everything. It’s all happening
At the same time. Interpreting dreams while watching Let’s Make
A Deal. Eating tofurky & Cherry Garcia while practicing
Yoga. Happy Baby. Down Dog. The temperature drops
Sixty degrees in ten minutes. Stop signs wobble, wobble,
& then everyone is outside watching the meteor shower.
It is so contemporary of us to feel the sky pressing
Down. Copernicus was an impossible dullard & Darwin
Didn’t even grind up the finch beaks before he smoked
Them. It is far too easy to get stuck, circling the roundabout,
Thinking about the reality show you wish you’d starred in.
The first & final season of Let’s Make a Baby. The time
Has come to triumph over the oppression of our
Zippers. My finger is on the button of a machine
I’ve never seen before. Night sounds like an ice cube
Dropped into a hot bath. We could warn each other
About the coming windchill advisory. Tomorrow’s slick roads.
It’s so discouraging. Today, I ran the microwave
With nothing in it just to see it catch fire. The purple-
Lipped days are upon us but don’t dwell on it for much
Longer than it takes to assemble the washable nativity set.
We all have a better place to be, right? My appointment
Started ten minutes ago. I slept through the alarm
& then the rest of my life.

the physics of sawing yourself in half

Because the cleanest cut is the best,
a band saw is the most efficient way
to peel a banana or ensure that the last
word spoken will be the last. How to separate
the self from the one thing the self knows?
Grim faced and happy, it does not & will
not ever completely know. Cleaving
& clinging & cleaving. Just like the backpack
slipped off the little boy’s shoulder when the car
struck him, I slough off my skin & watch
it flutter behind me like a kite of my failings.
I creak along worrying about when the garbage
disposal will finally break down, & the shadow
of the floating shape is tireless through the park
below me. When I reach for it, I am, for the briefest time,
that which is all elbows & knees, that which is
the kid seldom seen. So I stand in the sun, smiling,
letting the downtown passersby stomp around
like starving cows. The day is a chafing wallet
& I seem to have forgotten my cattle prod
in a passed life & I had more than a bit
of trouble getting in these jeans. Ah to be
ice cream again. Straight up weed no angel
dust. All of the walkers’ shoes singing out
in pain, those poor lowing cattle. I like my
burgers bunless & shaped into tiny pit bulls
that look like the one that attacked me the first
day of my job taking care of my Eliot, the beautiful
boy with Down’s syndrome. I avalanche ketchup
over it all & yodel. I punch my eyes & yawn.
Tomorrow if I wake up I’ll spend the hours waving
into every window I’m lucky enough to stand in front of.

“way out west,” “tick tick tick,” and “the physics of sawing yourself in half” from Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2010). Copyright © 2010 by Alex Lemon. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. www.milkweed.org.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.