Since the End of Silencing

Jared Schickling

And outside my hammock, during the lunchtime, I woke up naked 
and full of sincerity. 
You’ve asked me what the squirrel is treading there with his sand-colored hips? 
I reply, the miracle knows this. 
Full stop. 

What seams a disjoint to one will not seem so to another. 
Draw from it the cold 
sequence of its own antennae. 
Outside the shattering masks. 
There are many pigeon holes in front of whirlwinds of events. 

The serendipity rejoices in re-covering your eyeballs. 
We get the feeling 
they must lots to perform 
to each other 
or 

perhaps nothing but graves. 
Perhaps they do not falter. 
Pulled out and closed off, like land. 
Bleak weather, raucous lights like the miracle. 

This mechanical stalks of cattail and beginning fountains loiter 
with delicious lakes like noses to noses 
and black guitars like curves to a moon. 
Only home, just the 
grace, nothing but 
it. Perfume. 
Your prize is snow filled with a railroad track. 
As if to gnaw or shine, or crush. 
With its hollow blush, come with me to the circumstance of lampreys. 


Growing a tree 
rescued in the unguessed wind. 
With the quilt of the jungle where you sleep, 
a dream smothers the sequence. 


My angelic ears protect you always. 
The moonlit paths ignored, a language shines, 
replaces – it does not return. 


Reconciling the tiger of the book full of pride. 
Inside the ritual of the heights where you sleep, 
a dream sodden in calculations. 

Once there was a motionless astronaut who 
dedicated at parties, sitting in a triangle, among kisses. 

 

 

 

 

In addition to journal and ephemera pieces, Jared Schickling is the author of several BlazeVOX books, including The Mercury Poem (2017) and Province of Numb Errs (2016).  Other books include Needles of Itching Feathers (The Operating System, 2018); The Paranoid Reader: Essays, 2006-2012 (Furniture Press, 2014); Prospectus for a Stage (LRL Textile Series, 2014); Donald Trump and the Pocket Oracle (Moria Books, 2017); and Donald Trump in North Korea (2017).  He edited A Lyrebird: Selected Poems of Michael Farrell (BlazeVOX, 2017), and he edits Delete Press and The Mute Canary, publishers of poetry.  He lives in Lockport, NY.