Electronic Edition 1.0 copyright 1995 by Pierre Joris
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D E C E M B E R   W O R K

%  

	with what re-
mains of
your teeth
undo the
seam of night
unsow the
wound that doesn't
scar
the stars
that drive
close by the gap
floats brined
in tawdry
planet soup's
sheer thought

%   %    %

Your move:
the black threads
strangle
the sun
where the words of
running woman
peristaltize
your and I
mean every
body's	
surge
suppressor.

%    %    %

(First Version)


	Carry me,
dear, hunt
my antlers into
the netherworld
the swanword
never sings
you or any
	body to
rest.

%  %  %  %  

(Second Version)

Carry me,
dear, hunt
my antlers into
the netherworld
there where
the seamword
never sings
you or 
	here where any
stitched soul
backstroking
Lethe's
but
	a lure
for the ant-
hill called
memory.

%  %  %  %  %  	

	Wind up
that clock-
work wound
carries me
across meteor-
thresholds,
	lost the words
"metaphor-drift"
automatic
	trance-
mission
   graft
the futile
meteorstorm
dies her hair --
let the
out of the

bag 
	your pipes
dream of
shared crops
and pin down
the punroaches
the panic en-
croachments
bedevil your eggs
Tanith
		devil
the machine of sin,
tax the muscles'
linear drift.


%   %   %   %   %  %  

		I, at,
	wit's
	          end --

Europe
America
Africa

Euramfra, con
	'ti
nent

tit  of  world
	whirl'd
drive/driv/elle
out of Tanith
   ovens,
	wound shield
solar veil
	ovary's red shift
make do

%  %  %  %  %  %  %  


woo
& woe
the wound
's black thread
the wound
parenthesizes
the planet dirge
our last
teething ring
blasts off
as we gum
the grammar of any
straight jacket
into careful
byte-sized mica-
fluorescence
& grind
the "what-we-know"
back into volcano
dust
		how could I
	given the limits of
grind my matter
    into more than
trinity syntax

=======================================================================
Pierre Joris            | "Poems are sketches for existence."
Dept. of English        |   --Paul Celan
SUNY Albany             |                            
Albany NY 12222         | "Revisionist plots
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433  |  are everywhere and our pronouns haven't yet
      email:            |  drawn up plans for the first coup."
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu|    --J.H. Prynne
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