hour entry: Can the clock burn
Can the clock burn? Why can’t the clock burn? It is accustomed to flame anyway it is the tooth of the flame anyway. Why can’t a tooth burn? It does not burn because even if it burns it is embodied in affective rotations, nasturtiums prayer-wilt anyway, people live so close to all they may lose any second anyway. But can the clock burn? This is not about a clock at all but what the clock surrounds, the clock as a moat, the clock as a moat of charred clock parts, arbors, pivots, pinions, escape wheels, I’m talking about the instruments of promises and satellites and deadlines and rants and all one circles talking to oneself, sensing burn, I’m talking about the measure around the unmeasured, the center of the nebula that fails to hold or holds excessively. The clock surrounds a fiery center, a foliage of flame, clockless. It’s Sunday and I’m writing my heart out to get free of the clock, it’s the noonish center of Sunday and P. is knocking around the kitchen beside me.
to be inserted early into the unwound clock
/paper
reins so only the strength of paper can direct the horse only
the
slightest tug
only
the earliest entry
mangled
screen door, faucet whir
we
swirled and ran to get to la-la we were one tenth of ourselves, late,
if
I am not here on the page where am I with
the
spatula stir, the flat nose of the tool
only
the slightest dragon if you overstate yourselves you
are slightly unforgiven
/paper
reins so only the strength of paper can direct the horse only
the
slightest tug
only
the don’t-be-cranky-mom sentry
pat
the mane, flying fur
we
were facing deadlines racing we were one tenth of ourselves, spent
if
I am not here on the page where am I with
the
carpool weather talk mistakes spilled gym-locks clunking
/only
the slightest penciled goose-flock if you yourself are something spilled
something
spilling
loose
then caught, a signature to authorize, a barbed wire knot
/paper
reins so only the strength of paper can direct the horse only
the
slightest tug
only
the backdoor buzz entry
stamped
mail, coughing fire
/we
were facing morning email compression we were one-tenth of ourselves,
lent to
pixelated e-report if I am not here on the page where am I with
the
barely leafed strawberry this is how you draw a dragon
only
virtual worlds break
if
you yourself are something swelled with
stream-breath,
draw the dragon as a horse continually pulled from
present tense, yourself the sensed rider.
hour entry: Here is a school bus moving through the pink dawn
Here is a school bus moving through the pink dawn. The bus is an arm on a clock moving in a circuitous circle through its route, advancing toward the school bell. It is abruptly light here at 7am because today we moved the clockhands back, spring-forward-fall-back, a task the collective tactic of a past war. When World War I occasioned a need to save coal, Germany responded by adjusting the dawn, and daylight-saving was born, other governments mimicked form, though today the reasons shift |spectralraft||markettassle|. The arrow is nearly weightless, pushed, even the return feels faintly wrong, pinned in place by mnemonic device. I am not saying the bus in daylight lacks happiness, the school bus hisses and clacks, but even the pinkest light can lack continuous accuracy, unspooling
Note: information on daylight savings time: Carlene E. Stephens, On Time: How America Has Learned to Live by the Clock (Boston, New York, London: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), 122.
Endi Bogue Hartigan is a poet based in Portland, Oregon whose third full-length book oh orchid o’clock will be published in spring 2023 by Omnidawn Publishing. In 2021, Oxeye Press published her chapbook the seaweed sd treble clef, a series of poems and photographs. Her most recent full-length book Pool [5 choruses] (Omnidawn, 2014) was selected for the 2014 Omnidawn Open Prize, and her first book One Sun Storm (Center for Literary Publishing, 2008) was selected for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and she has collaborated with writers and visual artists in the Pacific Northwest. More on her work is at: endiboguehartigan.com
