Gritton

Arrival at Mountain of Saint Michel

From Rennes

The Vilaine

Par Carnac?

Every syllable perfect through her lips

And skin bronze

The way she talks is like the

Italians tanning in Axum

nipples dark as moths

She tells me Ille-et-Vilaine

Named for the little girl it took away

The river—it took—very slowly

A little girl, long ago:

Vilaine.

Villain. Swallowed her.

The sand breaks green and dark

a solitary white

And it leaps from peaked dunes

Like ghost fugitives

of that great forgetting

I wait to watch her

The fortress creeping up the blue-white

Of the sky like a man's hand, scarred and pocked,

Up a wedding dress

She gives me such a funny look

that the words crumble from under me:

Jean, she calls.

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Ragged Poem

the bouncer is a feeling:

sheets that didn't dry

his baseball cap gives him no eyeballs

and i'm drunk

plus i owe julio a drink--julio what do you want to drink

i'm hollering to the atmosphere:

what will all these humans have to drink

julio is nodding to the atmosphere:

what are the specials?

there are no specials. not tonight not ever

the bartender assumes too much:

she assumes i'm the one that drinks the drinks and she the one that serves the drinks

julio nods:

all right, pal

go back to your seat, that's your first and last warning

this man in the leather jacket is a feeling like a damp, smelly towel

a feeling like a condom on my windowsill plasticizing, months past expiry

julio, don't look at me like that

without your eyeballs

you need to get ahold of yourself.

i'd e-mail a million fetuses a million digital photos of my wrists bleeding

if for nothing else than to keep them out of danger

i would call them internationally

using a sam's club phone card decorated with stalin or hitler

what do you mean?

to illustrate my point i throw my drink at the ground--it bounces on the carpet

julio, think about how it crunches under everybody's feet.

the ice, man. the ice

crunching underfoot

as night turns to midnight

and day flees across the lonely bastard sound

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