Little Glass Pen

Harmonic Points

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:07:00 +0000

One metre is one ten-millionth
of the distance from the Equator
to the North Pole through Paris
This is a useful measurement

Then there is the truth of ratios:
a bird’s wingspan to a room,
the opening in the window
it entered through, then lost.
The weight of a pair of hands
trying to free it. There is the lonely
side of dialogue. The pieces
of the map and the ground
covered by your body when you fall.
The cleverness you trail like
a comet. The circus and the flea.
Edson’s ambushed stone to
the size of his mother’s love. Some
giddy slippage, to all the harmonic
points on a line to infinity.
The curved eyeball to the keyhole
of the hostage, then, the walls of
the captive. Lullaby of bedrock
to all it cradles. The hollow
of your hand to what I would fill
it with. The rose and what rose.
There’s writing on both sides
of the paper. The sensation
of speaking in tongues. All those
centred deities of blind voyeurs
to the spectrum of a single note.
The other side of the river to
a fish. Totems and guttered stars.
Death, ash, fire, warmth and smoke.
A forced song of almost someone
in so many breaths, there is also this:

Made flesh: what I take in
from what was said.

Winged Things

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:10:00 +0000

Once you give something
wings you have to treat it differently
because the bones are hollow-
just the heat coming off your neck up close
might cause an updraft that could send it higher
than the sound of our breathing, past
the fist-shaped clouds and their drizzle
past the pelicans and stars

There was an address written on her palm
that’s been smeared by yours
She can’t remember giving you the keys
You can’t remember locking up the house

Every other word here is the possessive you both lack
each day is its’ consequence

You’re driving through the night with her head
on your thigh
her white hand on your knee
into the pink morning where the world is all
keys and keyholes
where there’s roadhouse coffee and a quiet
place near a dry creek bed to do things
with mouths other than speaking

Billions of eyes have slept through this
With no sleep to wake from
yours can’t see past it
It’s been days since she’s taken the steering wheel
She says movement is her only peace
opening the window

You draw a concentric circle around her
to see what gathers outside
Sweep up your tracks behind you
keep them in the glove box with the maps

At the appearance of heat puddles
ahead in the middle of the road
you sing her bridges of outlined plans
knowing she is calmed
by the weight of your intention

You use fuzzy words
because the clear ones are all being used
back at the supermarket and the primary school
and you know her ears are tired of them

Over and over you look at each other
hardly recognising yourselves in this heat
You stop the car, lean over to kiss her in the centre
of her chest, she untangles her sunburnt legs
from the dashboard and smiles a distance
you can’t turn back from

A billion birds perched in the clouds look down
and are blinded by the glare from the windscreen

Vasilissa's Doll

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:16:00 +0000

I am the house and the hut with chicken legs that turns to face us.
I am the sea cave speared through by the foundations of skyscrapers.
The glitter and shine of bare bones,
the scaffolding and crane, the tented buildings,
the outskirts of the forest with trees bent like ribs.
Strange enough without shadows.

Here I am, one hand in yours, the other searching for skeleton keys
in the soft cloth of her unwritten pocket. Private finger cave
of receipts, crumbs, stones and small change. Here is
the dull-eyed doll who comes to life at night,
feeding my cheeks of milk and blood
as my hair grows down to my waist.

I like to tell you this story, you, keeper of water and all
the paths it makes when trapped, bent forward in your chair
like the red rider, have asked me to close my eyes and feel
the quiver, Saraha haha.
I laugh, I know you’re winging it.

This is grown in the dark too, in the chambers of involuntary muscle
and it will go one way or another. I am picking
the black grains from the wheat.
When you tap me on the shoulder I turn
to nothing

Song

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:09:00 +0000

(i)

This peninsula
where the river enters
where the earth disappears
where moths and fish gather at
the light, where we swim
into each other, braced
in the sea cradle
in the rock

where the song breaks, here
the rolling lull of tongue,
where the water curves back
into itself        and again
the salted liquid
                        draws
and sprays, so unlike
                        silence
where we sink in
where we make room

(ii)

Where there is
always a chance of being
misheard, like all things driven
through air        by wind
whole words might not reach
                their destination

Washed, still, dry and done with
our bodies, against
        the width of air
              alone with
our bodies, where

        Enclosed within-
our breath, to not
blow out candles
or feed fires

To Applause

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:11:00 +0000

“for someone in love with words,
it amazes me how fast you can move
to be free of them” ~James

Having been accused
in the past of lying,
she is mute.
Now, she repeats
certain movements all day,
etching each moment into
the musculature of her
body as proof.

He admires her form.
He writes to her of it, in angular words.
She places the softly crumpled sheets
of paper over her body
and strikes a match.

In each moment she still feels
the hundreds of fingertips
which have explored her histories,
only to become them.

He asks her questions
of corruption
and tenderness.
There are no answers.

He will come to understand
dissolution as she traces
each vertebrae of his spine
with her tongue.

With each calm stroke
warmly welcomed,
she smiles and gifts him
the strength to leave her.

On Warmth (To Cross Out Each Sound With a Word)

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:23:00 +0000

“…don’t let any parts of us be amputated that could be expansive for us”
~Irigaray

Coming back.
A map can be heard in a hive’s song of wings,
to follow, with soft dark feet. I have positioned
my chair about two metres behind the others,
the legs pushed deep into the turf.

Your hair is longer, more gray, your lips thinner.
A less dramatic sideshow. I follow your breath by
the lift and drop of your shoulders, the finger
tracing the podium.

The sun throbs behind my lobes. I am too far for
your words, just outside their reach, I imagine
skeins, some transparent consonants, stretching
towards me,

divest of their meaning, I could touch them, just
the sensation of an S whistled through the abacus
of your teeth, resting on my fingertips. I spread
my hands upwards

on my knees to catch them, the mathematics of
your sound. Later in bed, when you ask me what
I thought, I touch your lips, lean forward to push
my tongue into your mouth.
Into the swarm.

Meridian

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:17:00 +0000

She is not going home, not yet.
It all recedes, the sound of him rattling
up and down the verandah, insomniac
louvres chattering.
Behind the shed she sits
on the pigeon shit, outstaring the darkness.
Here she is unbreakable. Alone with
the jigsaw of her hands, with all
their disquiet, the slough
of unusable areas of memory.
The wisteria hisses close
to her ear, sleep
sleep

Inside, he sinks into silence,
he can feel her still
close. In the darkness.
Her loud smile full of teeth, exclusive
greedy girl. It starts to hail.
He waits, snarls,
stubborn bitch

Something Special :)

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:58:00 +0000

Dear All,

I have been very quiet lately as life has thrown some interesting lessons my way.. however while I have been looking the other way my words have been found their way to be havened in a most perfect manner by beautiful editor and publisher, Amanda Oaks, of Verve Bath Press.
For your own copy of the hundred printed to have and to hold, please follow this link...
Verve Bath Press

Enjoy!
with love
A.Joy
x

Drawn Resting

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:40:00 +0000

charcoal rasps
vespers
as I try to draw
from memory

a beach near Ise
with soft rocks
that turn to powder
at touch

a gentle slippage
of ritual and
desecration

All The Way Home

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:41:00 +0000

i

Beginnings deteriorate
Even the second knock sounds
an imitation

The scraping of shoes on the mat
the soil trapped in the tread
The space once travelled
which then feels known
arches back like a snare

There is a particular silence
only found under the feet
of a traveller at rest

As windows of hotels sing back
at the motors of aeroplanes

ii

To stretch your arms
around both sides of his body
Pull him close to your chest
rock the squalling flesh
into a curved hush like
a horizon

iii

These soft annunciations
breathed into frontiers
of hard flesh

dewclaw words coiling
beside a tangle of legs
agape in silence
at the look of things

The pigment darkens
as skin covets its own
articulation

iv

In summer
made pretty by smell
of frangipanis

There are these mornings
where heat deadens everything
where
you don’t remember your own name
until you hear it

What if you lay with a stranger?
What if you fell asleep and woke
beside him?
Recognised your shape in the sheets
your colour against the white

Could you coyly
become a sound?

v

Geometric alphabet
with its sharp edges
offers no security for the memory
It cannot keep the devout
gushing of the mouth

greedily taking in what it can
hold of the voice
what it can retain of what was seen
bristling in the water

This point
which cant be reached
can be called separation
no matter the distance

Blue Alice

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:47:00 +0000

absurdity of trying
to grip a fish
with needle fins
as it flaps gills
gulps choking air

hook mouth
to a memory
silence swells
to a freak wave
a wall of water

the smallness
of a body sucked
ten metres under
water beneath
a ledge of rock

Forearm

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:42:00 +0000

to thought

swollen bulb
to
thumbprint

mouth to valve

words that barely
fit in
the throat

i
drop to
your

pillowcase

Making Room

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:11:00 +0000

describing you
to myself

i pour hot

in silence
an ampoule

cooled glass

a moment
before desire

Seminal

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:45:00 +0000

Deep in the throat
they laugh-
hungry little bodies
with their pointing bones
fastened with buttons
hooking eyes

He has seen her
alone
through her window
turning her body in
the mirror

This is a gift
(she tells him)
Takes his wrist

Fingertips focus
in childlike
desire

It may take
root
grow inside
leave accompanied
by words and sounds
Thoughtless

In her parents’ bed
Red mouth agape
she listens to his
whispers

He lies
beside her
slightly
Off-centre

Counterpart

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:13:00 +0000

When I watch you choose your face in the morning.
When you hold the silk voice to your unshaven cheek.
Muffle questions with the scarf of your full throat.
I want to bite your tiny glass fingers,
snag the fibres of your lungs
in my clenched cat teeth
with indifference.

It stays like this,
holds to the refrain.
Strains to open and wriggle free
then leans back into itself.
A perfect disciple.

This is how we queue to touch you.
In the middle of your chest
dousing for certainties-
through the ribs,
through the pink flesh,
through the mouth.

Sensed Through Opaque Windows

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:06:00 +0000

It’s hard to understand architecture
when my past is sea and desert.

It could be that these things are not
simultaneous.
When you kiss me and the inside of your mouth is the colour of mulla mulla, it makes my feet burn. Then, I am standing on the red earth in the middle of the day and a girl’s voice shouts “you look deadly sis”.
Beside you now in this rectangle of flowers, in the pocket of my black jersey dress, my fingers find forgotten cherry pits (I ate them to wash those last words out of my mouth)

These pieces of memories I haven’t known
lie lightly.

Undone by the closeness of the ocean, forgetting returns in pieces. With the skin of my body resting on the skin of your body. We form small patches of darkness between us-
As smoke, leaving, the fire aspires to a more spacious form.

Todays encased
in yesterdays
Tiny birds in eggshells

Tithing

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:14:00 +0000

Smaller

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:20:00 +0000

Absence Spans

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:12:00 +0000

Orb Weavers

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:29:00 +0000

Loss

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:44:00 +0000

In the tuart roots
five metres underground
the chamber moaned
as the air dried out

In Hand

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:52:00 +0000

A.Joy

Access

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:49:00 +0000

I keep nothing here,
in this room.

No furniture, no pictures.

I like to look out
through the window,

imagine all the bodies
within my body,

which may or may not
exist.

Strake

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:25:00 +0000

Because you
came here dressed as a man,
in a shirt.

Because things keep slipping.
Shifting distinctions.
Hiding your desire for
alike.

Left adrift
you venture your throat
to a word that tightens
around the sounds you might
produce.

You surrender to your own story,
told. Mothlike
hands wide, slow
flapping,
in and
out.

An imprint held.
Curved like a bone.
Leading edge to foil.

To reveal where thoughts are
sinking.

A last glimpse,

until
it bores its way out.

amanda@littleglasspen.com (Amanda Joy) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:06:00 +0000

In latter versions
it was told somewhat
differently

Her following always
the direction in which
her toes pointed

Her disinterest in
recognition leading
to the still belly

Le prochain
Write something
(don’t write something)