August 7 (Vatra Dornei)

 

sunflower corn then village facades gilded

fence tops the road which plays at style 

like danger minimalism in the straights

hairpins dressing us up for memento

mori on an adventurous cable bridge 

forbidden to strangers crossing the river

on foot a few fields away in sun and grief

 

since in this narrative I am we royalty free

an allergy mapped across the meadows

and dead old poems playing tumbleweed

in the orchards where the apples aren’t

ready for anyone but you while the address

splits in two above the valleys or the cities

where a congress should be held indefinitely

 

for our new communist friends with faith

everlasting in committee rules we ask

is this mountain a metropolis if everyone trades

translations for the sound of a cock stirring 

you too early when you said you wanted

a dead man’s rest from kikeriki as cucurigu

sharp as the sun’s teeth we woke wanting

 

 

October 27 Recall (Cronenbourg)

 

thinking back to the trash heap art project we and I toss the pile in a rush to see who had the prettiest dump photo of them all and came up with a montage of plastic and particle board and dried paint and metal brackets in a blanched-out dream of building material mood boards left to rot or simply wait in the rough path between the service rails and what we and I eventually saw to be a Jewish cemetery

one photo shows one or several of us standing on the mound of planks that had been one or several wardrobes another shows us or them sidestepping the stacked window frames and another the stone wall with a vocation in holding up the vines and thorn bushes

is was this a nice day for a walk along the tracks along the walls and fences that line the tracks along the barriers behind which the field flowers and other volunteers make the yards look fuzzy brown and barren to some while we or I and them make out the edible things the figs and raspberries holding the corners of small courts and offering to no one the out of reach fruit scalded by last month’s sun that wanted that truly wanted in warmth last summer the time in which the floods were not so far from here to make us feel safe in the flats and valleys

 

 

November 23 (Off Shawangunk)

 

speaking of cattails he or I see them cut away or smashed flat along with the seagrass that is rather lake grass scratching at no one visible not even the geese who prefer a lawn or a causeway to scatter with their shit before the long flap to a nominal south but here in a notion of north we or they need to keep the pond razor flat for mystical purposes aligned with the gated entries and the diverse species of blind

I I think I blast off on the value of non-intervention about a mile in from the trailhead we or they left no trace turning at an easy pace around the reservoir once closed double decades to stop terrorism from spoiling the drinking water where he or I spot the shelf mushrooms fruiting through winter and we praise the meshworks beneath or beyond assistance

dead weight hangs above us or them in the branches where trunks took their pratfalls in stages waiting for the wind or the ice or the bores to take down their prop too while the lichen filigrees the clearinghouse

it was naturally a weird one who yelled this is private property when it wasn’t that a weird one standing in for the thousands who want no body snowshoeing across the lawn of the neighborhood fresh with unmarked snow over there in the stretch around the cattails and lakeweed spiking up out of the pond like rebel hair like plant punk

he or they come then to walk alone or in the company of dogs here there where the plot never hatched beneath the elm and oak and the dying ashes a retirement reservoir split in three to say this is a long time to go without seeing anyone in the good end of a closing season scattered with leaves or needles and what still passes for sun home to visit for the first time in years it does us good in miles

Jeremy Allan Hawkins is the author of A Clean Edge (BOAAT Press, 2017). His poetry has been selected for the Best New Poets anthology series and the extended program of the Venice Architecture Biennial. He lives in France where he researches writing practice and spatial design.