The Ear Especially


You don’t need eschatology to see the finitude
in all this. Cantilever arm of all sweetness,
pinions of every description
in the sinew of its reaching out. And towards
what? The globe is fine corpulence, the flesh
of the ear especially,

vigour of sports car on wet May bitumen slighting
the bone catacomb smart. Paris, hello. Where
have you hidden my brother, and Now,
my brother’s brotherhood. There is a Southern Californian
song about all of this that eschatology
cannot penetrate. So stop, sweet claw of new day,
digits clammy.

The clay pits, to gasp with hand on back of head,
to be lulled to sleep like the puppet infanta,
side with brother clover and fatten wanton,
lope the lambent disguise if but only in the moment
of finitude. Need not finitude to see the sweetness
in all of this that made eschatologies
unrenewable, when instead,

and we do know this, the fossil only comes twice,
as in: all time under, the all time no time above.
That grasp, darling hand, park your car, knowing restlessness
and velocity in the woken, in the face.

Corey Wakeling

Corey Wakeling is a poet and critic living in Takarazuka, Japan. His second full-length collection of poems is The Alarming Conservatory (Giramondo, 2018).

More by Corey Wakeling ›

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