II.II

by Eldon (Craig) Reishus

I was of one mind.
Like three blackbirds
On apple-limbs
Naked in snow.

Ode to an Irish Bumm

For Caroline,
for the back of her sock drawer
by Eldon (Craig) Reishus

The road is nothing like the map.
The map shows a straight red line.
Yet here it is, the road,
half washed away by rains,
and the half left over hooks,
twists, jags, swipes,
bends, knuckles,
every wicked which way.

A drunken road engineered by a pickled brain.
And the map maker some pied mad hatter!

Inside of nine weeks
you went from my housemate slash
daughter to slash
sister to slash
lover to slash
slut fucking her least favorite son.

Your bumm as perfect as that narcotic afternoon
you improved upon timeless Keats:
Beauty aches to be truth, truth beauty.
And deep within my graspless self
I suffer to hold on to this
even as your right hook floors me (nearly).

Early the next AM,
striking out alone again,
rounding yet another bend –
beyond some man tossing sticks
into the daybreak for his dog –
I glimpse, blushing behind the glorious mist,
the spitting image of your bumm comely dewed with Irish parting.

Tá áilleacht sa bhóthar ólta
'is tá ciall íontach sa léarscáil chacach.
The drunken road is beautiful.
And the shite map makes brilliant sense.

Haltered Top

by Eldon (Craig) Reishus

Behind the garage
beside the Minnesota
I melded a carp's skull,
some mallard feathers,
and the cool clay
of a rusted wormcan's shadow
perfect for my hand.

My first tit.
Unearthly rapture.
My first artistic feel.

Ten thousand miles downstream
meanwhile across the Atlantic.
Small world. Where words,
disentangled from my mother-tongue,
inflect a brave new social life
in terms of German case and number:

Brust, Brüste, Brüsten.
Mops, Möpsen, Möpsen.
Apfel, Apfel, Apfeln,
Klopfse, Klopfse, Klopfsen,
Busen, Busen, Busen.

Yet still my dreams are suckled to it,
my first tit, unweaned from the nipple
I neglected to invent.