CONJUNCTIONS:42, Spring 2004

At the Drive-In with Reciprocal Rib Logan Burns

1. the opposite of light is light approaching itself intrados, extrados             two curves in a singles arch standing at the mine’s entrance (arbitrary)             muffled workings of hand tools             shushed by sheer planet             exchange of headlamps changing shift I can hear deceit laboring                           the machinery of it,                                        perforated strip shuttling                           sound like a low-pitched fever                           cracked rib cage strummed lying in such rapid succession it feigns motion but in the daytime, the drive-in’s a vast white heart                                  when you said “in retrospect” did you mean it                                  when you said                                  reciprocal rib”                                  the fact is, when I said “desire”                                  I meant own                                  and when I said “you”                                  I meant                                  parts allocated at 9:20 giant figures tumble out of the night sky in drama and comedy                                  first,                                  a snowcapped mountain and the name of the creator                                  "Could it be that easy, his name in cursive?”                                  she whispers under light projecting life in its collision 2. —cardia, to scale four chambers of the screen stretch 20 grills and 40 shut headlights across look, I’m the arch in the hallway you’re the ring on his trigger finger take a Polaroid of the moving picture as evidence and watch motion move into stillness           how we want the opposite of what we’re paid for, or at least proof as the past comes into full, just a moment ago, while the present script sounds the future of what we see 3. the genealogy of generosity after the first explorers let their horses out to pasture the new world             still freshly tattooed with saddle sweat stain             overwhelming fumes of the human wildness took a rib, or rather, gave the taking of it a gift in theft             domestication lost             dispositioned organ less guarded             bar removed from the cell how—in the beginning he gave his to form the girl imagine, actually taking it off —the abdomen in fierce reproach— tossing the curve into the dirt and waiting for all its stages to turn how would he have gone about it, toolless and uncooked? the scheme, shrouded in holiness once I shot a nail through my hand just pulled the galvanized body out didn’t even look,             the instinct to decipher which body is foreign and threw it to the ground like something hot, like it was still biting me             beyond the province of choice was it like that? blood on the house’s frame? or was it like weaning the body off the body? here, by broken ones, as in the ones (re) (paired)             as in—man and horse             as in—him and her they round up the others to trim their hooves and register the foundered a deceitful gesture, the beginning of reintroduction when the first one was mounted did it crumble under human?                                        withers shuddering under shining                                        the film off its reel no, you’re the arch in the hallway I’m the ring on his trigger finger