from Pre-humous Arboretum

All disease of intellect, of will

icicled, snapped off

your uncircumcised mind.

Why narrate your death or the ozone’s

cracked egg, intelligence oozing

into broken stars stars? Too many lines

left of the glacial poem drags its Gobi

shadow, disorders

in the wakes of

ever-smaller Napoleons and Pyrrhus

of Epiruses, Latin

American junta through fat drug

clashes and these three

pyrrhuloxia—you know

those dirty-grey cardinals

short, stout bill, red crest and wings—

in these rugged yucca dry (

when (the clash-smoke (floats out of form

clarifying things)     )           )

as a document.

*

Why imperialise yourself?

Celebrate yourself, said the Whitman.

And in parentheses: no one else will!

You are—and luckier—by the world

anonymised, art lustrated

in the fire of western snow

on the ghost planet of red-gartered ragwort.

Why look into the dipping square-mile of oyster grass?

Lee Posna

Lee Posna lives in Wellington. Books he’s recently enjoyed include King Jesus by Robert Graves, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel de Landa, and My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger. People he’s recently admired include Marco Sonzogni, Greg Taylor, and Therese Lloyd.