Erin HONEYCUTT
THREE poems
MEMPHIS / MEMPHIS
15. 96. 11.
§ 15.
his pick-ups
picked it all up
by the base of the sepulcher
with mist on over
driving up the walls,
pale blue in overdrive talked into it
the inlaid fountain
up above
and the
dive bar basement
up above
and the Dutch pond
with dragonflies
up above
and the pick-ups
sounded like
teeth cackling
over the new lute
music for film
§ 96.
she squeezed light
here is that list
gold
horror
hue-shaped bird-gave-up
dog-walked-into-car ticket lost
thicker jack
she squeezed light like this
ticket stolen
yellow bone
wicker gate by
the bee’s,
oyster mouth spoiled
thicker jack hammering
§ 11.
follow up the staircase
of the hollow cavity where light is fretted or unfretted,
sound hole, a hole in my
body in the hole of wood,
sounded by the bare fingers
on a table. still following
the light up the staircase
that is twisting now, ever
so slowly to the right
of my body, parallel strings
of my neck rising
up and up to the end
of the neck where
it is turned
by tension—
it is the
player’s tension.
nearing the top of
the staircase, it is
branching now
under a huge open
space, an atrium
of strings where
you thought ‘more’
was not possible.
a cartography
that maps two
different origins,
one in the Maghreb,
one a courtly
lute in Europe and the other
remained out.
Erin HONEYCUTT—born in Atlanta—is a writer and bookseller based in Berlin.
She studied Art History in Reykjavik and Religion in Amsterdam.