A Skin for Civilization

My mandible
my mandible
I murmur through my mandible
I mumble through my mandible
my tongue just isn't there
it's not there, it's not there
it's already in the grave
my muscle's in the grave
a worm between my throat and cheeks
a worm inside my jaw
my mandible, my mandible
my heart inside my mandible
my voice inside my mandible
the blood around my bone
the water smoothing stone
the water of a riverbed
the fish inside a riverbed
the mud inside a riverbed
that hardens into bone
the bone that forms my mandible
the casket for my tongue
a casket of obsidian
descending into flesh
a casket of obsidian
receding into earth
a casket of obsidian
expanding like a star
a casket of obsidian
existing next to breath

- Janann Dawkins

(added 07.05.08)

Found Poem : Who Thinks Abstractly?
Complete Transcript as the Supreme Court deliberates Grutter v. Bollinger, et al

Please those admissions.  Can school enemies
constitute, because racial metaphysics
apply abstractly, the witch?  School
as against the race is cased meaning.

For to practice the achievement explains
loss.  Somebody schooled comes numbered
here, narrowly.  Would ethnicity
superfluously composed know itself?  That nation does.
One knows it is to craft all thinking.

Preferred over courses found or having seriousness,
they got societal.  Few before selecting
exposed choices, the so-recognized suggestions.
If a scene or instruction goes, the single humiliation—
certain artifice—that this reason effects
is instructional.

- Janann Dawkins

Asymptote

There is a frequency, a place,
a ribbon of sound with loops
where thoughts take hold
like kittens up a curtain.
The pattern flutters,
sheer tails in the wind,
black-bordered moths of sun
just beyond reach.

- Janann Dawkins

Nonsense

The universe is a farce,
a frequency of being,
plenum fulcrum
shaznatting to its center.

Bounce back, that's the blather:
words heard in a mugging:
What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Tell us. The mouth is bound
to stick its cents into the fray.

- Janann Dawkins

The Purse With No Strap

I carry dead credit cards in my purse.
The crook who steals them will wake
in a jailful of dreams, his ankles in legirons
and even his tongue confiscated.

If he tries to use the fake money
the clerk will pull out a shotgun
and order him into the cooler
among the milk and heads of lettuce.

His rubber merchandise will bounce like checks.
His cheeks will flare like gas in an arson.
He'll remove his shirt and lie down flat
on the fiery herringbone floor.

- Janann Dawkins

Transpiring This Very Moment

The margin's magic melts like margarine.
Runny, sunny simple oil
tunnels near the tangerine.

Dimpled, rimpled rinds remain
tossed upon the table, tails
of oddly orange orangutans.

Prim and puckered partisans
claim the Swiss's cool new soil
and dance with dandy courtesans.

- Janann Dawkins

Two Questions for the Hitchhikers

The man with the face of a crow
smokes tobacco in his craw.
His hands are full of steering wheel.
He says, "I've driven for a while,

why don't you take over?"
"I dunno," I say, "this is the biggest truck I've ever
seen.  I couldn't take control."
I stare out the window at jet contrails

expanding like marshmallows.
The truck's exhaust in the rearview mirror billows
like poison gas through the tailpipe.
This is shaping up to be quite the roadtrip.

We pass a man carrying armfuls
of scorpions.  We stop.  I ask him, "Isn't that harmful?"
"Nah," he says.  "They wouldn't sting."
When we bury him that night, I'll know he was wrong.

- Janann Dawkins