· the cultural society · » Dan Beachy-Quick

Poem (Coriolanus)

Dan Beachy-Quick — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:00:55 +0000

Put down my name and stepped toward
The awful thinking.
Where is wound? Where harm?
I entered the city gates and fought alone.
Wounds? Mouths?
Lethe is a river in a vein —
pulsing through a body that bears a name
others name —
forgetful behind the eyes.
Where is wound? Where harm?
I fought alone
inside the bloody chambers,
weak-walled chambers,
stepping through the door
as they opened, as I knew they’d open,
frantic beneath the arch.
The supplicants, the mendicants —
where are they? Where the ragged
wives clutching to their breasts
babes that suck even as they wail?
Where the empty hands
my mercy fills? Where is mercy?
Where wound? I opened
my hand to drop my sword
but held no sword. Bent down
to drink but found myself
kneeling by the river. My body
pulsed with the tremors in the ground.

The fault existed below me.
It was not me who was the source.
I waited. The blood in my mouth
waited. In my breath
I heard voices muttering as wind
mutters breath through a room.
The distance shouted as it neared
a sword held by an arm wounded
by other arms. Where are eyes
inside the wounds? Where mouths?
He saw me as one sees a river
dividing the fields from the city.
The city was in me. I held out
my hands and looked at the ground.
“Where is mercy?” I spoke at his hand
empty as it struck the ground.
Then he was kneeling. Then I saw his eyes.
Then he spoke. I entered
the city gates and fought alone.
They name me after cities I conquer.
I entered. I fought. The old men
who mourn the dirt they sleep in —
Whose lament in dust names me?
Where are they? Speak. Where are they?
Speak and tell me my name.
We who were speaking were
speaking to the river in the ground.

The Luminist’s Notebook

Dan Beachy-Quick — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:00:28 +0000

A Cultural Society digital chapbook. Click here to view The Luminist’s Notebook.

Minute Gears

Dan Beachy-Quick — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:00:26 +0000

The minute gears mutely whir. To put your ear
Against it is to put your ear inside it.
It does not tick. It isn’t a heart.
It has no pulse. It isn’t a clock or a wrist.
Scrutiny can coax no secret from it.
There is no hearse with one flat tire
In endless circuit, headlights dispersed
In fog like sunset behind a veil.
A paving stone extends a grave through iron
Gate to a door at home. To knock
Your hand against it puts your hand inside it,
As in a cloud at night the pale moon
Gather outside itself its own light
And glows dimly behind the dust that outshines it.
It has no heat. It isn’t the sun.
It isn’t uncertain. It does not think
About the sun or the distant balls of dirt
And ice that circle closer to the star
With each circuit done. Comet tails
Darkly flowing back as the horse leaps
Forward, straining against the catafalque
All November, predict disaster as grammar
Predicts breath, the need to breathe, or the mind
Must rest. It is its own edgeless disaster.
It is there as if it were not there. Vague
Repetitions haunt the circumference.
To walk out the door is to place your foot
On a stone worn away by another’s foot.

Rumor has it that the sun sends heat in form
Of sight. Watch the ice as it melts
For proof: water pools, darkens on a stone,
Becomes as a shadow on a stone,
A horse’s hoof as it rises off a stone,
Except it rises forever, and the shadow is gone.
Such processes turn the minute gears.
It is not a note in the margin. The margin is
Covered with snow. When the winter fog
Disperses a black horse stands on ice
And cannot move. It is as if a breathless song
Hovered like a veil in the air. The black
Horse’s breath spirals upward like smoke.
Pyre-smoke like a thumbprint as a cloud.
Similes sing mutely in it, likening the unlike.
Mourners name the peace they find and walk
Away. To step into it is to find it missing.
The footprints are before you as you go.