Carroll Dunham

Lutz Bacher

WHAT’S THE CAPITAL CITY OF ECUADOR?


I stopped speaking in my wolf-den voice by the time
I was in college. The administrator poked at his keyboard, a

    classic ectomorph,
Are you seeing Disney characters anywhere? No,

I can't even name one. The literature on underground bats has them
as a food source for bad children, who if you ask me are the

    only worthwhile
children. I’d seen Jeremiah Johnson. Closer to respect than can

be imagined, the furs I wore. Shared blood over snow is an
intimacy, write that on your little screen. There were TeeVees

    on walls.
I first tried a pompadour—you can see this wasn’t quite

working—but I wasn’t finding my new “you.” Number of dependents?
Roy Orbison. That made one. Take off those sunglasses the

    professor told
me. I thought she wanted to see down to my soul. Incorrect!

SAD FLOWERS

He's back-shot, black blood; you get the noon re-
port. It's divided into pieces--they aren't things. They

   curve over
the wires. Hello, death in Africa, to you in your underwear.

Here's a blueprint of my pocket. When my face was wrapped
in muslin I could feel the dying animals, the places where they

   left salt
in my brain. Child, animal, things burned: what memories of

these will I bring with me out of the grave. Everyone has to
deal with lint. I pick the stuff off my aloe plant, it flows up

   out of
the baby's mouth and she's laughing like a dead Jazz Singer.

NO TOYS

Last night the moon
Wavered. The arithmetic
Of the deep ever-

Lasting. Or how much
Fun will we have
Tomorrow? Remote

Controlled boats are
What to me? They
Just fuck up the bird's

Patterns. My anti-fantasy
Lodges one in the cattails.
That's right. I might take

Your football away if
You kick it into my yard. I
Might kick it over the river

Toward the face of the
Wavering moon some night.
I'm a fool. I'll pay

Almost anything to
Charter a fishing boat.
It's just a matter of scale?

By the age of ten I'd not be caught
Dead in the company of anything an adult
Might mistake for a toy . . .

BONESET, WRAPPED IN BANDAGES

It came insinuating itself up the stairway tower—
giant lonely great-hall where I trembled purposefully

   between the
cries of atoms. You may surmise I have no idea what

I'm talking about. It's the slow heart. My cave in the fauna-
rich nursery, an australopith's tilted pelvis. I was never

   be-tasseled,
rather looming up stairs like a moose thinking inwardly about

dark, deep water. Introversion is a celebration of being,
or else. Or else, I die smiling with you, sister. My white

   skin under
hair, ridiculous narrative of the egg, until I pigment-out, sinking

into the cross-referenced strands of some evolutionary path,
too dumb to love it though. My color releases its secret . . .

XX

We sleep through the hurricane, an upright

symphony. The light of the stars filters what the brain

of a dragonfly cycles through. That's not a star it's
a satellite, you remember your father saying. The taste of salt, like

remembering the time you were forgotten on water.
It dies in its sleep.

FLIP BOOK

Take the stubbed, slow man.

Glimpse him on the naked hill.

I found it lovely, the robber,

his sage face disproportionately
open like the many holes where
someone had blown up a house.

A HEAT CONSTANT

It was even in the paper--officials turn solid
at room temperature. As youngsters we gasp through

   the pain
of not knowing. In house after house the siblings die. The

mother eats candy while it snows outside. The floats that
appear are black crepe paper, the ones who slide under,

   window blinds
making a maze over the neighbor girl's face. Here are

some tips for burning alive. The wind crawls down the
telephone lines and into your bedroom full of sapphires.

WE HAD SIMPLY CROSSED OVER


It don't seem exactly humane . . . and so what is he doing now?
That was the story, eye patch, like swallowing the exhaust

   coming out
of a Kawasaki motorcycle. Like a generator misfiring in the

basement, the rain outside, five bored prisoners. I'd already burned
myself on the baffle. Meanwhile at the Saint Louis Zoo, What the

   hell were
they crying about? The children ran for shelter, a city sweltering

in the heat. My argument was Cutter and Bone. But this was
only my threshold, blind in one eye now--how many lifetimes have

   you begged
let God forgive you? My family tree and how it is intertwined

with the Falstaff Brewing Corporation. I was standing with friends
in front of an Aldabra tortoise. I'll pay for dinner. I felt like I was

   still swaying
in that fucking arch. Coal was buried in my eye, and it was talking

                                           Ducks taking a walk