swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

a long breathe
Gerald Majer

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wey could not decide by
hoom
a funnel was fed

a fresh stem
held by uss
unless wey

let go a second
a third a fourth
coming then

ducting winds

wey conspiracy
the rock runs the tree

masks the stumble
way wey grip uss

around graceful shapes
Rio Lastima bridge April windy afternoon

down on the water wey
can see through the piers
and glitters

and wey keep going
flat lateral

drama no where
wey only scarving

writes this whole book
about the sound of wind

against urr ear.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re not looking at anything at all here. A line is conjuring across. The arc of it
you can’t get fixed. The inside side may be the outside side. The thing probably
has its own weather. Islanded. The brush with the flows slides off whatever
memory is left. A spring winding down inward, a lever taking off steep.

Tenderness, come guess. What’s around toward the round and the circle. The
excuse for the limbs, the arms, and the legs to be flying out from there.

Or proposing that a fastest spin verges on a point standing still.

Momentum would be easier than animation, which is always requiring that it live
and give.

Cannot hold the thing only stone. Water draping rain. Motors faking rest.

You’re wondering if each object you don’t know is tracking, sniffing. Not a hunt
here but a long breathe.

Or this is a pot loosened from crosshatch and spiral. It doesn’t hold or holding
this time means pouring itself in. The world around it thirsty to be touched,
which is why it’s a world anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~


Dusty burlap bags in the back of the tunnel, right where you turn to go into the
first cave.

When I move them around to get other stuff out of there, I hear the pieces
rubbing and scraping and sort of clinking together, dry friction of locust wings, of
dumped potsherds, of certain thoughts we don’t have anymore.

I suppose among them is a thought of the fountain. Or it may be more like the
fountain makes for a certain form of thought or even thought itself.

Say it proposes sequence, pure sequence, as giving mind.

Something issues out from the sequence idea. There’s a space then that comes
open where mind goes or mind comes to be mind.

I’m walking alongside a cave vein or an outdoor river. I’m wearing a necklace
and bracelets. I am later splashing into the water. It sloshes, brims.

I’m leaning over and seeing my face where my hands are dipping in and bringing
a sheaf of it to my lips.

urr sweet fog

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Gerald Majer’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Yale Review, and other journals. Their literary nonfiction book The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz was published by Columbia University Press. They recently completed a book on a Baltimore music collective, The Vibe Notebooks, and also last year the experimental poetry book Fountainous. They live in Baltimore and New Mexico where they pursue a range of theater and music projects, including the sound-art duo Vibranium Experiments and the performance project One Thousand Jicaritas.