January 22, 2025
Six Poems
Sandra Meek

Wilson Bentley, Photograph of Frost, 1910. The Metropolitan Museum.
Acquiescent Moon (in Auieo)
Not Saturn’s pursing rings
chirring the end
to any fruiting, the orchard’s bluff itself
no frost’s causing—still, the orbs
brown, worm, fall. Pawn
and Psalm, Fray’s
Unfurling, Blistered Empress
of Almanacs—such
is night. Eye of Opal
skull-sculling the wheeled
beyond, auspice decoy’s avatar, thrall
that star’s flung bright
inciting vespers of wolf-howls and surf’s
push-pull tiding the crescendo
of all alarms’ urgings
dismissed: error’s an army crunching ice-
fettered snow, an assault
dumb silence let go, always, past.
Dawn’s what dusks
guile flown as augur’s
nullifying light which begets
both hold and hull in these
crossroads’ crux. Fugitived
not to mask, but shield; not
to lack, but wield.
Horror Vacui (in Auieo, reversed)
(W)here be serpents be need
not to know no (d)art’s sufficient
to tranquilize (t)error.
What mappa mundis inked (t)here:
excess. So not to launch
night’s mind-field, the beyond-
wor(l)d’s world’s trod
to (l)anguishment, behemoth, to blank,
and b(l)ank, accruing
precedents—co(m)mas
a bruting, then, never not
a burnishing: ciphers
rendered beetled demons
and crucifi(x)es to pray us
isn’t (t)hem onto that vacuum mine
effected, perfected there.
Self’s echo. Lost caus-
tic fiefdom. What usufruct’s bluff
misdeeded to: all that business
of broadcast past(ur)ing wilderness
(w)here the decoy—colossal
untruth, Truth—
lies now, last guidepost
to vanquishment.
Schwa, v. (in Auieo)
As, sans ă’s brass
tacks and jazz hand
stands, sans ā’s
bass paydays, jays’ May-
day angst; as, unlush
lungfuls hung hum
-drum: cumulus chuffs Ur-blur-
ring in ill-lit
limning. This “schism-
bridging”—cliticizing.
This splicing: middling.
Meter metes the kneed
neck, bottom born
or thrown—not lost,
nor forlorn. No
knoll’s solo shot,
from control’s contort
consort broods:
from common lot, bond,
chords on hold
so long—
from tomorrow’s woodwork,
throngs.
Anthropocenic Wish (in Auieo, reversed)
Turn dusk’s
atmospheric skin
strung
as tropospheric
urn back
as ash
as halo
of smoke
the first
struck
match—no
not yet
lit.
Centrifugal Forced (in Auieo, reversed)
Wind-thrust, what holds
domestic in unfurl
what a flag
phantoms:
border. Hem. Skin
thick with push
away. Who so enters,
decentered
with shun, surplus
and foreign,
lingua franca of them
isn’t us—push-
pull that tolls bell-
icistic with if’s
rust: that staccato
of lockboxes
ticking
shut.
Afghan, v.
As, at an art gala
all backslaps and back-
stabs, a man pans
as handcraft, damns as
gal-/vamp-/grandma-
art, as all prams/
mascara/shawls,
yarn art’s play*
and play-acts fawn
at a man’s canvas
(scamp that attracts
a bad-ass swan’s
attack) a mass’s all
a gaga at; days, all brass
balls and glass
jaw—at dark, all angst
and bawl; apart, back
at a flat, at a bland
canvas-stack that all
say flaw, all say
hasn’t, hadn’t,
can’t, what that man
clasps calls back
art’s last thrall—at day
camp, as a lad, a lanyard
a rapt Mama’d call
grand: as, what’s lap-
drawn, balms; as, what wraps
(yarn all dawn rays,
mandalas, star-sprays) ah—
warms.
* T. H. MacAdam (Canada/Japan)