Three Poems - Sébastien Bernard
The General
He spots a fly
He walks across the tundra
He plays croquet with an antelope
Who uses his hoof
According to my anatomy
Those are nails, he says
♪ Croquet hoop! Hair
In my soup! ♪
He visits his brother
Sings an opera tune
Under the table
He watches as the black cars go by
He hosts a wedding
He makes bold pronouncements
Mimicking Bonaparte
And bemoaning Russia and Waterloo
As personal failures
He praises the bold secular laws
That legalized his bizarre habits
He makes large gestures concerning
His reputation in the capital
He returns to his mother
In utero, tutto intaglio!, he says, then
Hand me my coat!, to his date
And partner in revenge and theft
We have no hope of making it out
Of this country alive
Out of breath
Trying to hold the blood of his
Nightmares, his childhood in suburban France
In, the bullet in his belly
Fired mistakenly
By a checkout clerk
Who stares at the couple empty-handed
And lets them walk out with the wine
Free of charge due to wonderment
At such superb theatrics
And like a marathon runner
Or a rebel in a Godard movie, the General says
Just maybe, my love
On this grand escape—the last—
There’ll be more chances
To sing.
Modern poetry
Spring: a lovely time
to quit your job. The inevitable
is irrecoverable, but maybe there’s
no past behind those mountains—it’s worth the trip. All event
horizons meet somewhere spritzy
the language of innocence makes sense. I’m not a tractor
I don’t have euphemisms for sex.
Tiger meat, cilantro, & applesauce for breakfast.
Satisfy your hunger. What way your way.
What’s the sound the Cordyceps fungus makes
as it grows out of its host’s head?
“Bazing, bazing, BOOM.
Hold me, mother.”
Dedication
I see Rowland S. Howard float
through hell
holding his own sun
or mirror
or liver
saying he’ll be out soon, it’s just
he was curious—
the ‘O’ in ‘Or’
he says, and the ‘O’ in ‘Ocean’
or ‘Ornithology’
are the same—
leaving myself
too
Rowland S. Howard has cheated
death, I say, counting my fingers
or passing my fingers through my lack
of a beard
or smoking a pine needle—
don’t ask me why I’m here
it’s personal
and you’d be surprised
how quickly they let you in—
the ‘O’ in ‘Cataclysm’
and the ‘O’ in ‘Happy’
I reply
like a blind priest:
are not so different
either, at any rate
two things
Rowland S. Howard also holds
as he floats in the afterlife
of his choosing
and I ask him how?
he says you just
have to keep your eyes open
when it happens
oh
and be brave
that helps