Purity of Absence. Dave Margoshes

a boundary beyond which

       there is no conception, brave

       Columbuses sticking out their tongues

       at earth’s edge, leaving god’s forgiveness

      behind them in the constant slant of sky.

       How right the bard was, what fools

       these mortals be, all the more so

       if they think they aren’t. Fools

       who gaze at themselves with wonder,

      with reverence, as if seeing something

       more than what god had intended,

       the simple arrangement of his form,

       there on the glass, the reflection

       burned with balm onto our perfect eyes.

Eat Book

       for Salman Rushdie

      Ernest Toller, an antifascist German author and playwright, was arrested in 1933 by the Nazis and forced to eat one of his books.

      —Newspaper Item

      Eating our words, we find

       ourselves face-to-face

       with realities we could only

       guess at before, the bitter

       taste of metaphor staining

       our tongues like blood ballooning

       aortas into comic-book dialogue

       bereft of all distinctions.

      There is nourishment

       to be gained from narrative

       and simile, from truth spread

       thin as peanut butter all the more

       palatable, sticking to mouth’s

       wonder-struck roof, embedding itself

       between the teeth of lies, annoyingly

       beyond tongue’s tangled reach

      but things we need to say

       catch in our own teeth

       if we hold them in too long

       disallowing the natural propensity

       of nature to seek its own level

       abhorring vacuums sucked from our guts

       by words sharp as bayonets, the turning

       away of each tiny, perfect ear.

Perseid

       Sage Hill, Saskatchewan, August 1993

      Backs turned to artificial light,

       we marched up the hill like soldiers

       to battle, laughing to give

       ourselves courage, our faces

       lifted to the trembling sky, god’s

       ruffled breast opening to enclose

       us, twenty poets or more ranged along

       the curving road to the exposed bones

       of the radar station, its voice

       stilled, its ear no longer cocked

       to heaven. We would be radar,

       hurling our pulse into darkness

       in hopes of making contact,