MARA CAHILL

Glasseater

I

Step on the
pebble-shards
pathing the entry,
broken portal
leaks light
out one of its
cracks, warped
boards creak
tomorrow to tomorrow.
Heretothere spots
open, fragile
fleeting glimpses in
the light-pools
around your ankles.
Index cards
cut the dead wind,
no sense or
edge to it.
The failure
to know
is a failure
to breathe –
choke back
black blood fire.

II

Whirlspot blackout. Eyes
aglow bright, hot, desirous,
blind.
Drive forth, or is it driving when
you’re on a rail, or in a riptide?

Is the silt blinding to the jellyfish?
         don’t answer, its rhetorical, i
   always did speak too imprecisely.

With choices like these... Jesus-piss-christ,
these faggots, an almost bloody yellow smog.

Blank cold rooms forever,
       drop-ceilinged, dull,
       half-matte cinderblock,
       half-humming flourescents
To reach is to gasp unseeing, to gorge.

III

 

The second act of Lawrence of Arabia opens with Lawrence,
                  ( that flaming [...], )
      detonating an Ottoman military train. White-robed Lawrence and his army, concealed
           behind a shining dune in an expanse of sand
             gleaming rails explode, bullets rip through
           flesh and coal and metal. To destroy those tracks was to maintain a
relation; an exchange of places not forces. 
 

Someday, someday you might find that in your
self-picking, you have peeled that hangnail
all the way back up your arm. Far enough, to your back;
pull deep and hard enough, perhaps you can prod the machinery.
Prod is to say only inspect.

Much deeper incisions must be cut,
much deeper (bloody trenches must be dug).

IV

Spinning wheels in oily snow –
        Insipid little conversations about takeout-app orders –
        drink from the abattoir trough you vacant-eyed leeches,
        cut out the middle man (we all say to every mirror).

Careful, your ulcerated stomach
might burst. Black/yellow bile,
viscera and intestines. All over the
tile, very difficult to clean up.

          *

In the film Tout Va Bien, the camera pulls back to 
show you the cut-away construction, to show, 
so to speak, how the sausage is made. But it is not
 in the horrors nor the drudgeries. 
Lets be very clear; it is simply difficult to explain.

          *

Gramsci’s ashes stink to high heaven of failure;
of blood spilt and wasted, but more, and worse,
of blood wasted and not spilt. 
Be honest, you and I both know very well 
that to be torn in this way
is not to be torn at all. 
Shelley: proto-Lawrence, proto-all;

we must despair 
most of all
of our own sundered works.

V

In the film Tout Va Bien,
it is complicated and it is not.
These glimpses in cracked glass
beg for something.
Again, lets be honest;
to begin with,
it must be your own heart,
own stomach,
own eyes.

 

Pluck them out, like Orpheus;
weep erotic;
       But it is not for love one must
                die 10,000 deaths.
       Place them before you,
       swallow each shard.
 

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Sounds of the End

An iron-curled wind,
accumulation of dust.

Seething sky
perched tense on an I-beam,
abdominal sliver of
a past-promised future.

The doors scratch, gnaw really. In
a teetering moment I’m hearing
too many ghosts I don’t know.

Again writhing rivulet again,
hum, buzz, scream;
this precipice won’t turn over.

Insofar as there is something
worth breaking,
the same cannot come again.

Hear now the sounds of the end.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Creekside

Awaken with
evening light on the rocks, 
the fading heat of late August.
Long shadows, sloped bank,
verdant moss patchwork.
 
Warm hand sunbeam.
Maybe an image of forearm, 
maybe no image at all. 
All there/is.
Lack builds its home -
a hand that must have gone.

               *

Which is all to say:
maybe there were shouts or tears or 
small, burning, vague fears; which is to say perhaps
10,000 years collapsed into the head of a pin or
10 million into the ochre dust or a bird call.
Rivers and bleeding metal, maybe a chemical
spill ribboned the water that day. And yet

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

MARA CAHILL lives in Philadelphia, PA. She can be reached at maratc@proton.me.

THE PILL, issue i

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