Two Seances
By Brandon Menke
I
The Calvinist with borrowed shoes
drowned in a gilt tureen of bird’s nest soup.
Poor, misguided dear, studied linguistics.
Couldn’t go home again, try as he might:
Hamburg’s a ghost town. The stride pianist
was last to escape, before the Army cleared it
to feed their uranium fetish. Cake plates glowed
in the darkness; chandeliers didn’t need light bulbs.
The tap water runs immiscibly to the sea,
rainbows on the shore where they buried him.
II
His sister lies waiting in the seraglio
as waterspouts intertwine off the coast.
What needn’t be said was there, writhing.
Men and their false crusades—all of Egypt’s
splendors for a shepherd’s book. She scrubs
her face past alabaster, past plaster of Paris,
until it shines utmost. I don’t want you to know
everything—I have to save something for myself.
Lead white smoothed into imagined creases,
she arranges herself amongst a forest of limbs.
Brandon Menke cracked your spirit slate in two.
Published On: February 14, 2011
Permanent Location: http://www.forgetmagazine.com/110214e.htm
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