Sunday, September 4, 2022

Jed Munson : Mouse on the keys

 

-

 

On e dgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgeedgedgedgedgedgedge
    
Along
              
the scaled wall, me ditching

the fungal afternoon
for a pipedream I keep swinging
 

at with this boomwhacker. The exercise

exploded into a chest’s
 desire               for five rivers’ names as Ol’
    
Guiltree crabwalked through the outdoor mall again, ninefaces

Aflame in this area
Of

maximum surface to be desired back by.

Targets on benches revolve into a winterscape.

On e
silent Chinaman, Uncle You-Again, floats through the postgame
arena where movement was proven
 

impossible in Rome.                            I showed them in the ditch off Gammon
an angel’s maw,                                                             

        wheels spinning a perfect homage to wheels.

I point to proven points on a map
and surprise them with the authority of my pinky.

The tenderness of the takeover.

 


 

 

MouseMutt was out there too those days,
              
in a rented RomeWig too big for him,
       
tonguing the mantra

Look.

But don’t glare, pupils—                           I shout back: it’s time

for commitments, @birdiesir! 

(he’s my barber’s barber,
he admits the RomeWig is scratchy)

     I keep going: beyond tempered adoration for a freckle
         
once pecked out of the screensaved
temple!
 

Some know this tune without my explanation. Still,

정이라는 것이 있으니까,
I try to win him over
th e dgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgedgeedgedgedgedgedgedge

    
Along
              
the scaled wall, my thumbs smearing

the frosting over photos                                                                                                                                                       

                  of that cave of sequence we stopped at
to look like we understood
what we were there for.

                                                                                                                              

Remember how I imported him
the memory

How
right about then the rain would pour                                                    

                                                                                                                                                                   in the middle of a dormant fountain?






 

A
National Wonder

        drenched in the distance
I couldn’t for days see through my love for?
 

     The infinite need for a hairspace, one
short?

Covered in the fading
tarp of the sky?

     It’s been gone since the livestreamed flames.

Competing for our fancy
funding was the war, tightening its new brass bolo tie,
the wedding,

the second wedding for the white half, which had to be bigger

and better, with fries.

A book of falls with captions, that book flapping
as it falls,
unlike my phone that just clapped against the mixed

woods,
         
into the canyon between the shelf and the wall

one morning
without the chainsaw outside my window,

       
the pages performing a community
force in the flock of redeyed

purplenecks
taking flight to the conference

at the fountainside, the lifted-off sidewalk
lifting after them, feeling

felt, left, winged, like picking up
a hammer today and circling a schoolyard.
 

MouseMutt and Guiltree and Uncle You-Again,
setting their flasks aside, team-tackle a pigeon.

I stand back with a pen that exploded on the flight
over and think but don’t write

                           
thoughts that unincorporate
afterthought.                                                                         

 

 

 

                                                           

— - 

 

We wait for orange
to go flipflopping along the river, our mustaches
    
forgivenesses’

tails,
saying brother, brother,

after the war

한잔
하자고
                                   
Post-it:
we’ll watch, saltbreathed, as Uncle You-Again

throws a stingray back
into the ocean, the promotional

fountain the others feed from, needing something more
         
tubular to hack.
 

The surface takes it                                                                

under the darkle
of its wing.

                                                            I see where we go when we blink.

 

 

 

 

— –

  

I blink in the dark and think that was pointless. I have
empty
eyedropsules,

a floating fishbowl in my hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jed Munson’s [Photo by Keum-ji Son] first chapbook, Newsflash Under Fire, Over the Shoulder, was published with Ugly Duckling Presse in 2021. Silts appeared with above/ground press in 2022. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, P-QUEUE, Full Stop, and others.

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