Renga

Melanie Neilson, Elaine Equi and Martine Bellen

1.
October:
coldness or virtue—
one long line2.
First a slump
then a glide.

3.
Quasi dye,
Routine, surprise, pines—
Comeback land.

4.
Forest White
erasure

5.
Traces map
the underpinning,
its allure.

6.
(Canny seen
Thisaway.)

7.
“Egg go home”
Shouts lord as I touch
   (you are subtle)

8.
Girl Talk vs.
The Ghost of …

9.
leaf by leaf
illusions of choice
work silence

10.
(a) Dangling
Palimpsest

11.
Apple Blue:
answers ripen in
morning light

12.
Lariat
Afternoon

13.
Evening sole
Thrashers without sight
Passerine

14.
Repeating
the password.

15.
Songster once,
this knot up-in-arms
retreating.

16.
Ballistic
metaphrast

17.
Resting in
the chaos of the
Middle Ages.

18.
Eye carving
Catalpa

19.
Trumpery
… hid in the attic
or the spy

20.
(im)posing
the center

21.
base and backs
curls, braids, feathers, staged—
portrait self

22.
Enlarged Times
Motion Stance

23.
stutter-step
defies the image/
obstacle

24.
spring in tears
subtle branch

25.
Second chance
Found where it was left
Memory

26.
Enshrined in
behavior.

27.
Blackboard work
summer in reader,
“a pen” picks.

28.
bored     walker
widow     planke

29.
Crossing the
border that habit
holds us to.

30.
Anecdote
Neck I rote

31.
Fixed stringed sound
Of the surf beating,
Metronome

32.
Sideshow: Ten-
Cents-A-Trance.

33.
Sometimes her
Scorchy face afield
Spectacles

34.
Mutual
Compulsion

35.
Swing in an
ever widening
arc— far flung

36.
more itself
august suite.

 (October 1992–
September 1993)