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This issue of JACKET is a co-production with New American Writing magazine
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Leonard Brink

A.Q.



The ultimate reality is the future and our death in it, or it is all that is real. On this the river is perfectly clear. In the high point of the valleys burnished bushes turn to ash opting for deciduous shadows twice the length of the sun’s fall from the status of a vital organ.

The culture of pearls stands still in a drawn-in geography. We studied the construction of scaffolds in a time so tubular it may be the shaft of an arrow flying with the expansion of the universe. If the universe collapses will its events still point in the same direction? Or face forward toward both the top and bottom of a flight of birds?


There are solemn moments where gravity pulls at an angle and a vision of pain on a lake is pulled into eyes filled with the superficial tension of tears. The mind is made of stuff more impenetrable than matter of fact but my eyes are merely in the mirror.

There is no between between the bank and the river which makes it so and the approach can neither be taken nor taken away without missing a point blunt from being hammered into a home.


If rain falls because of a rift with the creator then grass will grow to make a place where love can be made to flow back to the sea where idols drowned in whatever sun worship filtered into the groves.

The worry in the pasture is the disappointment in the desert. If certain words are allowed in the same room we may not be able to tell one person from another way of rooting about in the dark where the stars become visible again. I cling to one word as a buoy in inner space.


A consequential understanding is supported by a pillow of feathery dust mites softer than water even a duck would back off from. Once removed, the anchor of a sentence will never sink the boat it tugs at or hold distance by the antlers.

The sapped strength of trees beneath a play of passion ignites the darkness between convent and coven, where legs cross the street out. The lines must be unreeled to reach where grasp is irrelevant, where palms of cedar are crossed with the bottom of the deck.


Every planet has life, as mountains do, making the air thin where the rubber leaves the road. The milt spilt under the bridge is paint enough to whitewash the Grand Canyon. One must have gall as hollow as a bird’s cheek to break the currency of the past that charges us in the jungle.

Missed directions fly off our hands into bushes burning gray slate blank. I have trouble finding bread pure enough to host the body of my dog let alone be cut in two directions as a leash runs both ways at once. We are mixed up by metaphors crossing in the night.


In the far sight of a vision wheels turn in the mind that gathers no moss as it sinks to the level sunrise in the distance that passes for loss. Furrowed or knotted, the brain is the matter of perspective that sees right views in the rear mirror.

The framework which validates paint in the shape of a park where water falls is the cast cement of a city block in the form of a concrete example of modern artifice. Is matter a fact, or does a preoccupation with solipsism extend beyond my own mind? Spectacular glass bends to the shape of the eye’s idea of sight. A breast is kept secret from the right hand of God taking over what’s left of propriety. Progress takes too much place.


Closing in on the door between good and evil the mirror becomes transparent and we lose sight of ourselves in the green grass on the other side. We have all been roped into following a thread where our eyes are darts between decimal points and the periodic tabling of questions. Each breath draws a thousand pictures putting the bridge beneath the cart.

Missing chains of thought leaves one falling off the platform like rain. When one gets right down to the bottom of things there is a ceiling. The grand delusion of lightbulbs going on in our heads is going on without us.


New American Writing # 19 and Jacket 13   Contents page
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This issue of Jacket is a co-production with New American Writing magazine
published in the northern spring of each year by Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover
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