Apartment Poetry Quarterly

19A              19B              19C              19D              19E              19F

 

19A ALYSSA PERRY

[PDF]

 

from POOL

 

When I first descended below 300 meters
I had trouble maintaining altitude                this is control, test
                                                                      actual circumstance

a strong wind lifts                                     my attention aqueous
went to operating the ship

                                 I did not look out of the cabin

                                                     the gentle irradiant talking is
as a result I wound up in a fog
                                                                               on a road trip
                                                                                      I go quiet
colloidal and viscous

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After an hour of fog near Fish Lake we saw
the mile marker and parked
to walk into Pando, the gigantic living aspen grove
supposed the world’s largest organism
a 106-acre individual clonal
male quaking aspen’s
identical stems “a massive interconnected root system”
for “energy production, defense, and
regeneration
across its expanse”
snow covered up the organ grove the blue accord

what made male the aspen
drove on through Loa and Lyman

early that year the radio announcement

STARTUP SEEKING WOMAN TO GIVE BIRTH IN ORBIT

it coated the windows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because of the fog’s resistance                                 I began to lose altitude

I couldn’t see the sun                      but the fog glowed red in its direction

after half an hour                                   I came out into a large open space

here is what I saw from the cabin                                 through the glass

from the ground                                                          it was almost round

@ArtisticAntics                   here are 22,000 heart-shaped soap chips

so you can visualize                                                                     22,000

a mountain                                                                        of soap chips

an intractable slick              it lathers                       the loss it fills up

no one to wash                 I don’t know about you but I find it hard

to lose altitude                                                  then a change in the ocean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For admission to this art
institution’s writing program
applicants must describe
an important window
it’s material not to look

thru the rim of recycled
aluminum the curved dark
perimeter reflective liquid
crystal opening scene water
tap green grass the tap green

glass stream rearranging windows
to listen to water on the fronds
type the water onto fronds
when I first descended
to see the screen reads

if each window casts
a shadow on the wallpaper
of powdered aspen
I am positioned such
that vision’s light’s

like a small false sun
then I noticed the waves
disappeared the surface
became almost transparent
clouded patches

then abrupt two weeks
before the school shuts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Describe an important window: how long one can go
without water      how long the wound unwashed

32,000                                               once evidence was not in us
evidence it would mean something to look at

on the flight          coffee, cream in a foil pack
yellow sludge gathered beneath rose up

evidence thought it would mean something to look at
if who looked at                             what look could change this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afternoon shaky blue
in the browser tab, bracket of larch wing sun at back
in focus white bright
altocumulus like
to a North America or rooster rearranged
into a “square shape”

out of frame Revelation13net
psychokineticist
distorts his mouth to think the cloud
humming corrects the brain
for waves of weather con

make a square shape cloud
cloud reduces
to a seahorse hovering
at the teeth of evergreens

he proposes
its purpose inverted
rain-bringing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this YouTube the economist articulates rewards and risks
of Plan B. Solar geometry [sic]         bisphenol A baby

“what if you could dim the sun”     aerosolize solution
manage “that plume of sea water above”

salt up in the manner of catastrophic eruption the clouds
the clouds atmosphere the compact mirrors

go on and turn the light out

 

 

in the pyroclastic instant, nine-tenths of a mile’s mountain
bursts to radiate at sixty miles an hour like cars

in micron the island first sorrow of this hour of the island
the burst sheet of mountain suspends then overhead

a window closes and the wheat’s dead

 

 

that forced winter-summer the stratovolcanic nostrums

and Frankenstein in tannin gum and vitriol is written

and in the paintings of Turner “yellow skies typical
of that summer” “the red-to-green ratios

of great masters” of that

summer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sludge or slime gathered in large lumps

and slowly formed different shapes I was being drawn

into the fog in tannin gum and vitriol so I had to struggle

and this is my wife-to-be Elizabeth !

morally obligated to the cosmos’ squared-off edge

a handkerchief thrown across the face and the neck

the murderous mark and the breath

when I looked down again I saw a sort of garden

and this is my wife