Wreck
Forever from the white whistling sky.
Weather moves around the buildings.
I thought I said under: the way water
moves.
Sometimes an animal leaping through the tree.
Through it, what is past, overcome.
The rain rubs that animal off.
I refuse: the dis-ease being maybe me,
what is that.
I refuse: it is not. When I am a child
protected by weather. Instead of salty
rain-steadied.
Green falls all around, blast bones
of light and wet.
I cannot bide cottony pilgrims, travelers
of sleep in my sheets.
Without drugs she points, wrapped up in greyer stories.
Not one bang-up is easy.
I love the bruise its forgotten melt.
But when I know it I hate it.
To sit here, tapping, forbidden
from opening
the good vein...
Like, what if I won't.
To say right the words—the waves—
after slimming clots out.
A little spread far colorful, another night
in the apostrophe.
Being terror in its steadfastness. In its fastness.
Being nice.
Never was the stain so round.
Paper would not suffice.
There is this tremendous fear, the size
of art.
Don't pollute it.
When the ink gets down and binds-it: dream
to its mean.
But I have no path, no stretch along the robbed-out hour.
Morning is a broken end, to fill the bell.
Water slosh. I mean, so much.
Now paint on the wooden center. Paint not being
blood, not being spinning...
To put it down in the rivets, the ironed-out
age. Stories maybe do this. Maybe stories
in their patness. A tree I have had is still
alive. Stories may be the reason, light
rhyme.
I pin up the downed leaves.
Stick them to the wall.
A little grassy drool on the day.
Which is no part of written: the separation; ruination.
One puts a little spackle on.
One licks the sparkle.
One lends the song its reticence,
its reticence, partial flight.
Terror of making my mark.
Haven't I made enough marks?
I haven't made enough marks.
All the nightworms I know to be narrow.
A spider moves me past the window.
Pastness, in its arrows, full of light:
I know a sharp word when it drops.
Soot phlegm and thunder, in the waking,
which shakes sight out.
And I know a rain comes faster.
Frustrated for my lack of shaking, lack
of want.
Wrap your legs round a word
(to do that work).
But I want to keep the legs out.
Does the want come from fear?
(Come from hiding?)
The want not to keep slime safe.
There is not enough room.
So much room, going deep, goes
to lasting: like a fall does, dreamwards.
When I want a crippled meaning fullness
folds me down.
(Come from the posit, position.)
From the wreck, I witness
Anne Marie Rooney is the author of Spitshine (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012), as well as two chapbooks. Her work has been twice featured in the Best American Poetry anthologies. She currently lives in Baltimore.