Empty Wind/ Carthage

Empty Wind

Heavy roof, beams, green and blue-cored, beneath the eaves.
In low basins switch turtles, eels, and rock fish; bleached mouths of pig heads.
Moon and heights; river's channel, parting down a bed of settled stones, at bourn of pine and hills, summits crusted with grave markers.
Ends' of birds' wings, wind; covering over peak, misted and lit.
A water clock proceeded and toned over yard, a line of hewn rocks in white grass, scented and wood-slabbed hall.
Woven straw, twisting on the ground, boxed and trunk and branch in sober morning.
Swollen-topped stones, rain flicking torii's red columns, rock-slabbed entrance at base

Carthage

Revenant and clammy huelessness, tunic, composed face, topknot; submerged in desert dust at the four-cornered mount where took place the ceremony and procession -- balls, incense, palanquins, joss, somber and in movement. The withdrawal of the clay of feet. Above, in dim light.
Sunk and hollow, bled away, reclining, cask and body of gold-threaded jade plaques, nose insertions, and eye plates: the scavenger of the royal elements of the white stone circle or rise.
Gas and water houses and temples, slandered, gigantic in stucco facades and domes, on the unending plain of slopes, behind a brazen streak from the falling sun.

JF



"Empty Wind" and "Carthage," two prose poems by myself, published in
Pacific Coast Journal,
Volume II, Number ii, published by John S. French, French Bread Publications, of Campbell, California, Winter, 1994. 1994 would have been one of the last years in which a publication like this would have existed (more than likely) only in the world of print, with the editor accessible only by writing a p.o. box -- with no reference to websites or e-mail addresses. I couldn't find too much about the zine on the webs. As far as I can tell, Pacific Coast Journal seemed to finally enter the realm of spirits after 2009.

Dream: I was hiking amidst primordial trees, hollows, and mounded hills from the natural world of Hawthorne or Charles Brockden Brown. Mystery interlopers walked by somewhere below.