ancients
interplay of flames, hands
faces of candles
the night slowly rhythms
an old loving song of its own
erratic cat at the window
excited deeply at the filling moon
ancient languages tiptoe gingerly
grasp and leap into nighttime
time, words skins make
so briefly in peace with another's
phrases we are only beginning
to fathom
rock your baby to sleep
she thinks she can translate
©1988
Amy Jackson
carnival
it doesn't come often, only once a year
in early May to the parking lot
in front of the abandoned store fronts
of a dying shopping center
it consists of mostly red
machines and poorer people afford it
except for the man who videotapes
his properly clad lovely wife and
daughter on the stiff merry-go-round
he turns it off to save film when they
leave his frame of reference
choosing not to capture the thin
blond girl waiting for the magic to
hit her on a cold plastic pony
white, with a green garland
painted on its neck
each time she passes before his
waiting smile, her slump is a little
deeper
rounder in the turn of her head
opposite dot on a silly cruel circle
counterclockwise
a black man walks softly
in long shorts with a pink sailboat
on them, white striped turquoise
muscle shirt and black sunglasses
brave
boys make fun and practice karate
kicks in the air behind
him, and his friends fluctuate as if
within his personal cloud eleven
adding weight to his graceful life
life, a girl pushes at them
tells them to stop
picking at him behind his
back, making
fun, they head toward the swinging
twin bullet ride which will twist their
reality up and down and sideways
and their screams come from the
bullet with the rebel flag attached
flashing clear white bulbs
spinning, losing to the machine and
gravity pulled from their insides
they let go with all hands
corn dogs and hot dogs
the couple with faded loose clothes
young-old and weary, head to the red
fence to enter, she almost ahead of his
reluctant but complying steps, there is
escape
sun streaks out like in
movies about God sending messages
above it all
out of context
outdated symbolically
no one looks up
it returns behind tomorrow's
rain clouds coming in
there is only
one little girl on the automobile-go-round
pretending to drive a masculine red truck
instead of the sports car, bus, motorcycle or
sedan, soft and curly brown hair
turning in the wind toward daddy's
face
at night it will be
anotherness for them, next week
it will be gone.
5/5/88
Amy Jackson
flying in an apple
lip as petal slow-curling
finish it off, quick
spherical wonder of mouth-surprise
you didn't say it out loud for eight years, but
tonight you found the wing-edge of a tongue
nestled warm-dark-soft-red and beating
time to a fault
just behind my ear
listen to the staccato-artery, running safely and
wild, back behind the earth they struggle with bones,
finally
blue-eyed schizoid words
emit them foul and true
waste your time, full of it,
high-flying dares the flower,
final cut.
©1988
Amy Jackson
published in WordWrights Magazine
Issue #21, January/February, 2001
For Once
turning onto the interstate, the
overwhelming
dispersing
revelling
quiet sky --
summer shower has spent itself onto the
growing highway, and fragrant gray
cloud-feathers, air-sucked and rent, float,
move without an imposed speed limit or
engine full of dinosaurs, but
flowing, shining white streaks
bursts
ribbons, silver
white
blue and blue for a few moments without the
hot haze of a hovering drought-stricken summer
pollution in a dingy brown band, above it changing
realms of space, and, for once, the freshly wet
highway mirrors magnificence
reflects the atmosphere triumphant
simply there
headless praying mantis-like forms of
steel holding wires in a frozen parade,
how we love to imitate
pretend to evolve above and away from
what we destroy
in the distance
coming the other way
on the opposite side of a dirty
beige concrete divider
automobiles roll in each others' wet and
steam like disciplined metal pigs,
the pollution rising light-brown
above it a grove of trees
Chattahoochee
receives a rhythmic sky
somewhere children stop their gaming to
gaze and dream and see shapes they
cannot create
but i don't know where they are, or when
or why they survive inside of me
with other rhythmic eyes
rushed hour, resume safe
speed,
don't look at the sky
look where you're going.
© 7/12/88
Amy Jackson
for what it's worth
behind the cloud of your own steam you close your mind to intruders
like your memory of me, my potential as appraised, but that's ok
because the ending was off on both sides even though the pictures
seemed to be
perfect, they have curled and fallen from the wall, with
preview filmstrips flying, unconnected the show abruptly
finished when the director lost
interest like a Black Monday in
relationship investment markets, escape behind a cloud of your own
assets, start your own theme music, make an independent film, the
smoke rolls in through a vent, grandly speechless, it swallows your
thought in thick, untouchable white.
the world is crisp and clear-blue-cold.
tribal, the woods echo green with it.
no war, but you like it played that way,
deafen the sense of your own
rebel, rebel, come outside.
no one is watching, but me.
never mind, with your over-speculation
you may never find an equal.
©1988
Amy Jackson
good paper
cheaper sex and semi-expensive red lipstick
sticks freshly there like gum, there, where she
sold herself again
drugstore models wink cardboard eyelids
it's all for sale and clinically proven to reduce
reality to the semblance of youthful perfection
stinking steam does not rise, returns to
haunt these back and side streets
of blood and screams
deals of the aching unwise
so many dollars through her cigarette-yellowing
fingers, she's memorized the feel of good paper
her going price is coming down, as new
runaways make hotter commodities, fuller
lips, wider eyes, money still feels good
in their rose-tipped hands
©1988
Amy Jackson
hazards
who would've thought a man with a cello
could disappear so fast on a wet Saturday
street in Atlanta
at noon
with her hands curled inside like knots
flapping like pale ribbons
almost hello, walking behind him
by accident
who would have called to him
for the cello curve to turn like a question
and a stranger and said
what? look, I don't know you and I
know you don't know me
or my hands, nor I the touch of your
eyelashes on my stomach
a scrap of paper wet and run over in the street
would blow away in the wind tomorrow
his movement before her and the
foolishness of fear
as if, when they parted of course
when she drove back to that corner next
Saturday he would be there
or anyone would
waiting on a cracked slab of concrete
with a cello
©1988
Amy Jackson
her hands
she paints herself with dry
fingers into the bath-steam
into the mirror
dissolving
the differences between you
and her
green and yellow echoes
a little bit of sky blue
red thrown into white, the
black pours out of the blood
paints herself
with hot and cold pieces
of her hands
3/11/88
Amy Jackson
his and hers
with the inside of his hands his arms his
mouth he explores her source
wave-tossed, rainwashed, wind-ravaged
cracked marble soul
she not the classic Greek woman-man,
large-proportioned muscles nor perfect symmetry
not what anyone calls her
her fury is a finger reducing her essence to category
sometimes she ever-fleeing turtle-necked poet
writhes upon dream-glass-shards
with the outsides of heart he magnet to her
shuddering, calming, tremble-storming cloud-mass
within and upon her, search secrets' interiors
non-places, non-times, essence so rude so
light-filled divine, blend colors to onyx polish,
boil to desert-white bone, flight of dynosaur womb
adventure-spirit shared
create and destroy in flame the phoenix eternal
with the back of a fist
the delicacy of form-surface
shatter a menagerie of sheltered dream-creature-flowers
out, drifting out afloat
upon a steel-colored sea
after lovemaking with angel-demon, angel-demon, demon-
angel sounds
welcome, love, you terrify
and pleasing
stretching wings of flame
glow and burning ember-eyes
cool to the inside of his soul, touching hers
©1988
Amy Jackson
in a field
a long ways from
Danny's World of Tires
in a field
where a society of cows
stands in the shade
we are watched
earth flies away from my feet
he laughs at gravity
holds my hand
licks my lip
in a field of small blooms
the world flies away
from our feet
©1988
Amy Jackson
published in WordWrights Magazine
Issue #21, January/February, 2001
Maggie
she curls up to the television
she doesn't have a heater
it warms her and the roaches
like to get warm with her
forget forget she
loves the game of commerce ---
images like raccoons with
little black hands, washing food
no matter what there is to eat,
polluted or not, in the stream ---
she thinks they're cute, she
feeds them with brand names
dropping from her imaginary
lips because she has no food to
speak of
but she would buy it if she did
she likes to mention Bloomingdales
to the others in the soup line
they love to listen to her empty teeth
they curl up to her, inside,
they don't have a heater, either
and her roaches all have names
©1988
Amy Jackson
memoirs of a cat
it was
right after she changed out of her last skin
when she
did it, that new
sound with the mouth she did
and I could never describe how,
not being like her, you know
so
I just stopped licking my face with a wet paw
looked and listened to see if
she would do it again, but, as she looked back
I resumed
Wash, but thought it rather, you know,
memorable, as I
curled to find my sleep.
©1988
Amy Jackson
the egg
in her hand the half
shell of an empty bird-egg
somewhere by now the bird has taken
flight, somewhere chirping, distant from her
hand, her eyes, but he can see the
wings she imagines, reflected in
leaf-colored eyes, above them in the
sky, a hundred small birds fly
feathersounds, flightsounds
in her hand the empty half
in his, the other, and they
know how hearts can grow, and
fly away, tamer ones, like
theirs, though, stay near the
feather touch
strokes of luck and love
© 8/28/88
Amy Jackson
the way the road sounds when it's wet
like the side of your face in the dark
the back of your hand again and again
against the what for and why anymore wall, white,
that greasiness of the street and tread of tires black-clinging
feel of your chest against my belly reappearing like a moon, reappearing,
revealing, rebounding with silence, magnetized,
rubbing of opposites
pins from Mama's sewing box as a child scientific
forcing the polarity
coaxing disharmony from tiny steel points
gravity pulling them apart at the place where
pinpoints match and fall into her lap lightly
tires screeching, hold my thought to the road, slick
rain flowing thin contours of your darkest faces, blink
them away, gone my face off of yours to whisper-sleep,
like the back of your fist falls from the wall to your side
like magnets pulling a dream-fragment of the way the
road sounds when it's wet
©1988
Amy Jackson
published in WordWrights Magazine
Issue #21, January/February, 2001