Incantation



A crow curbside

its head 	unknown

mis-taken for

fashioned

	black snow





I chant Sanskrit

prayers not of words

		alone over

budded flight

downed by wind

black velveteen blood

black skin

feather: tuft of bird

wing

	missing

the presence

of the previous

you present 	within me





The sky – I tell you

is a chute to

	reign us in 


Consort



I find your hair flossing my books

and read what you have marked aloud

	this arbitrary paragraph

		this phrase never meant to be read

in isolation

	I pause to inhale

and remember the smell of your neckline and sweater

	           the smell of this book cracked to a page

where you have been and within this sentence

you are present, but something is off

my head shakes at its erring,

	up there with - getting my socks wet

they’re wet now actually,

a cause for removal



The books are abandoned

	bare flesh paddles tile to the dryer

	hands sift through a drum of incomplete thoughts

I wonder if this is similar

		to where you ended up

			or where I'm stuck



I crawl into the cavity

		that filled your chest

	I am abandoned – no – I am searching

for dry ones without holes,

		searching for consorts

in a padded room



	I am awake as the world sleeps on,

or perhaps I slipped into another world

	where the only present is I,

		where everyone is milling about outside

and I took the shuttle

	I apologize. I could not stay



I push the silent books

			away from me,

dangle socks side by side

one will fall off while I sleep

	but they are close enough







Defense of Irrational Rhythm



I see the fault

in my logic now

to think that,

since you listed off a bunch

of shit bands, you were sure

to like mine instead

because it’s better



I explain this – my dying

art of independent song construction

of lopsided refrains

interludes without a lifespan

rhapsodies, perfect

in their irregular shape



And when I hit this chord—

the lights turn on

and this note

when I sing it in conjunction

with that minor there

everything turns black

for about two seconds

and then the refrain comes back

and everyone can breathe again



You say, they’ve done studies

on all this – and concluded

that three and a half

equals a hook and that beauty

is symmetrical



But I think people

are most beautiful

when one eye is crooked

or obviously smaller

than the other

(it’s usually the left)

I prefer the lived-in look, I guess—

inhabited









Jeanine Deibel is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at NMSU where she teaches Creative Writing and works as an editor for Puerto del Sol.