Joel Chace
Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, Infinity's Kitchen, and Jacket. Most recent collections include Sharpsburg, from Cy Gist Press, Blake's Tree, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press, Whole Cloth, from Avantacular Press, Red Power, from Quarter After Press, Kansoz, from Knives, Forks, and Spoons Press, Web Too, from Tonerworks, War, and After, from BlazeVOX [books], and Scorpions, from Unlikely Books.
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from timocracy
Trembling puddle: he’s on that path though he’s made his cane
invisible. Such terrain as is ours.
At last, they’d
done it, arrived at city’s end, blackened façade rising,
curving above them.
untenable
uneightable unsi
xable un
fourable untw
oable unon
eable
So they turned back, saying
they hadn’t wanted to leave, after all.
To neglect
music, exercise, and begin to gather wealth.
Unseen cane.
puddle
trembling
under
swamp
*
Letter makes a sidewalk curb; word, an alleyway; phrase,
a block-long street; clause, a bridge; sentence, a
six-lane avenue down this city of speech.
His cre-
do, next thought, best
words; his speech, crook
ed, duck-
like, dull.
He wants to hide his feebleness; hence, the cane. And, though,
it’s immaterial, has become weapon, mutilating
those who care to study him too closely, those whose
scattered remains — one’s sinew here, another’s
bone there — gather themselves up to make a whole
witness, the one only who will escape and testify.
Blood has a
lexicon; spilled
blood, its own.
*
A new Sphinx claws its way over the walls of the city
of speech. This time the beast is male.
Each day sickness spreads.
Ramparts would weep if
they understood.
To un-
riddle the riddling
double-beast’s singing
whose music is not
music at all, dance
that knows no music.
This time it gives us the answer first: catastrophe; and,
to extirpate the curse, we must say, in exact
words, the riddle.
But our sentences slur.
The word of truth is
singular in
nature, and no
flying dream.
*
In this lake — in — lies a corridor; watery, long
container; narrow, floating stage: scene, a hallway; he
stands at the far end.
As he walks toward us, doors
on each side open. From every doorway, an arm
thrusts forth, with clipboard and document attached.
Without even glancing, he signs sheet after
sheet, un-
til, blur-
ry-close,
fade, cut.
He’ll never make a dive, back to that reenactment, that
reprise of how he brought himself to now,
when li-
quid dark-
ness over-
whelms his, on-
ly his, sight.
*
For the walled garden, he hired decorative
hermits — then forgot he’d done so; then forgot
them; then forgot the garden.
They’ve sheltered in
brambles, kept accounts with sticks on leaves, and
made plans to
show him.
Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, Infinity's Kitchen, and Jacket. Most recent collections include Sharpsburg, from Cy Gist Press, Blake's Tree, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press, Whole Cloth, from Avantacular Press, Red Power, from Quarter After Press, Kansoz, from Knives, Forks, and Spoons Press, Web Too, from Tonerworks, War, and After, from BlazeVOX [books], and Scorpions, from Unlikely Books.