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FERMENTED OPALS
I looked down to sustain the camera’s hide. I have never seen an Ibis mirror. The house rained. The beds echoed. A dead oud’s resin cloned the first sentence. An apple in the closet developed the scene. I felt the sun.
I fell into an opaque bed. The clone smiled. I have never seen a clone smile. His snails grew fur. The closest ant grafted the smoke with sand. This is the first piece of wood. This is the first piece of glass. Clouds arranged them behind dead doves. The membrane’s séance broke. The doves died again. The dead doves reset. I arranged them into flowers. I have never seen a flower. I have never seen a dove.
The sky and its stills mated. I have never played an oud. I have never said Bird. O snail, I heard outside. When the first dove died, the ouds ate apples. I died too. My glass fermented opals. The second séance failed, my fur glued to flowers. I have never seen a cloud. I have never looked down. The organs smoked. The clone strummed. I fled, immersed in planes. The mirror in the closet chimed. Dove. Oud. Bed. The blue membrane’s array split. Inside, the blanks bred herds.
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COMMON CLOUD
I have been a patient tincture. My sister, a watcher of snow. She thought her name would be stunned and it was. It was Iris Versus The Blur. It hurt to see the same snow twice. I was Also or Minus or Gauss. I think we are being minted again. I think we are cotton or bread. There is always a different cost. A different cloth. A second coat. It takes some time in the positive press. We practiced our transfers today. Iris’s insects were bluing the sky. Helio. Helio threads. She likes to call them Dowsing Crowds. I trace. I see parallel rays.
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Eric Baus is the author of The To Sound (Wave Books) and Tuned Droves (Octopus Books). He edits Minus House chapbooks and writes about poetry audio recordings on the site To The Sound. He lives in Denver.
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