2 POEMS

Peter Giebel

LAND WONDERFULLY REMOVED

His story was boring, as boring as boundless
is a category of broken, as a dog obeys the moon

as a dog owns fear perfectly with its bark, as everything
is fine as with his words assuming a knot is a wound

wound into a center, refusing to undo, a wall of hunger, rude
clockwork of dogs for what does your ownership mean, as

lies are beautiful all the time, as authors of corruptions
naturalize a beggar’s hand as how many stones in the lake

were thrown there the glitch in the wood, he suggests, the axe
made stray stalks surrogate for untitled nothings as scarecrows

in wartime form galleries of double-takes as a dog is starving
still, hold me down, have me kissed, with a series of jaws used as   

weapons I have to say tomorrow you may know nothing new,
as barbed wire in a wasteland landscape attains a loving human form      

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FOREST PATTERN

He says, old men say nothing, the light
is certain, because of the fire we see

a forest like a village the quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog, traces of work the eyes are on

the wings too much heat for too long the arctic
fox does not wait for snow ineffable, to be
incapable and, radically, to be restricted I bite
off the end of my tongue beginning with blue

making islands black tongue I’ve had this thought
too before in a new technical form every fool is a poet
I hate the light is a servant to this he found nothing
but the modern world a fantasy he could find nothing

where light bends, piss dust, piss doom, when they
packed up and left more pain, away, running, just because

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The title “Land Wonderfully Removed” is taken from Increase Mather’s [Remarkable Providences Illustrative of the Earlier Days of American Colonisation]. For a spell, I was reading all of those fragments of disaster and grace in conjunction with essays on land art, dreaming of landscapes full of little else but threats and laments. Such is the body of the series.