An Architecture by Chad Sweeney Book Preview

7/31/2019 An Architecture by Chad Sweeney Book Preview

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AN ARCHITECTURE

Chad Sweeney

BlazeVOX [books]

Buffalo, New York


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An Architecture by Chad Sweeney

Copyright 2007

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced withoutthe publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in review s.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edit ion

ISBN: 1-934289-68-X ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-68-6

Library of Congress Control Number : 2 007938738

Cover photograph by David Holler

BlazeVOX [books]14 Tremaine AveKenmore, NY 14217

[email protected]

publisher of wei rd little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]blazevox.org

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AN ARCHITECTURE [9]

1

every yearthe statue grows heavier

I want to put it downon this clover hill overlooking

the libraryit might roll away from me

it wouldnt be my faultif it broke back to its four colors

its mound of shells and water


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AN ARCHITECTURE [10]

2

bridgework

wedgework

signwork

seedwork


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3

the library is burningfire reads aloud

in Arabic in Greek

translating each bookinto smoke

outside we climb the sidewalks

past windows that fill

with our presenceupstairways thru doors

the invisible limps beside us

millions of is and is notposture and stride in

faith a manholds tight

to his own leash

as rain

fallsand does not fall


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4

Though railroad tracks appear to meetin the distance

they never do.Hired mourners depart

to the wrong century.Radio signals

bead along strands of smokeover Appalachia

(where I feel tempted to reportthe rivers are smoldering)

and glaciers in New York Harborredirect the lights

straight up into the haze.Music reinforces the girders.

One must

rely on hypnosis,a window

the color of wineis what in death

terrifies.The future protagonist

under development,equidistant from his flaws,

imposes this plot on memory.


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5

We searched the citiesin oneseach

for the other, orphans without

memory, the divorced, theprisonerswe

ate among cars and wires,

in the concrete was

no mother, in halls tenfloors up no

fatherand sent each dayour children

into huge buildings

into rows. Itshow we lived.


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6

taxis heaped with shoesbees and pages

torn from bookslanguage!turns

with shipyard birdsin sleeves of

warehouse glassour city

in green air and high green

lightrush hour under the ocean

each face crowded withformer selves

of the not chosen


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7

too vast to renderin watercolors the field

recedes

within ustoward a sepia line:

seven archetypes of

catastrophe

the lead swallow in the flockchanges

now that one the othersfollow

a single billowing


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8

I should have saidI meant to say

the flock turnsin that carpenter leaning on the pole

differently thanin you who read it

at the museumwe file by in ones pulling

each thing up by its nakedmaterialplucking it out

into light from the zerothe sun

shines for those who demand it, one

scarab, one flintedgeof the rail, the rail edge

speaksof an approaching train

its circumstanceand something of the words

shouted in dining cars


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9

for a time one may walkbeside herself, but

there intervenes

a street light ormanhole around which she

regathers her step and jostled

by the crowd turns toward

and away fromits alwaysbothinserts her body

into the bank turnstileto deposit her pay

repeating the sentenceher grandmother intoned this

time of year

favoringthe ankle that hurts less, that is

less swollen


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10

the nouns are verbsconduit between I and I

from which the fish the fowllooking

into ita face

breaks on the well watersource and structure

the double

helixa thrushs voice

of the body and beyond the body

is the meaning of our talk


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11

To carve a bird froma bird,to make a stonefrom a stone. To have

worked it all day withoutobstructing its flightthe flying

stone goes

dark at night and glows notwith light, but its roughdumb matter

brilliant among roots.


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12

by this slow burnwe live

smoldering

a tree

fire inside its woodwalks

out from the forest

the burning bushis a man

in average moments


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13

the snakeswallowing

peristalsis ofthe world

by which these roomsare constituted

camouflage

over a cityblock windswept

of copperleaves machines and

their maththe snakeunrolling

its throat cave(lingual)

birthsthe wet days


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14

the hillsidecollapses toward the water

clutches of briarnettle

inhabit the marsh reedscow parsnip

clamors from spring mud

in throaty wombsbouquets of nails and beaks

greenthrough last years

struggle, skeletal of russetstalks no memory

of mothersomecolorful windborne ache of seedpod splitting


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15

too many choicesgive me a shovel and a pit

let it be a stranger pays me

I will bury mountainsin this red sleep


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16

the windmill is turning

and its turningsare turning


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17

he carried the babys bodyeverywhere in that violin case

until they wouldnt let him enter the school

then he buried the bundleunder a rose bush

at his birth house in Watanga


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18

if hewants itand

he wants ithe may not

feed

his child

of his bodys milk


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19

twins born the morningthey cut off his hands

lean from the bridge to taunt

the monk clawingthe mud bank for worms

his toes grip the fish hook

Dong Hoi


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20

On the river a village,no road but that river

to reach it,among the women one man

selling what hed sewn in Hmongpattern

led us back to his hutawoman

a mother-man, he said,

my wife died leavingthe children. While men

planted ricethe mother-man of Laos stayed home

to weave. Scars

beetled his forearmsshrapnel here, he said

gesturing an airplaneAmerikhafloated over


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when he was a boysize of this one giggling in his lap

Booooooom!his face was watching the bombs again

but boreno anger smiling out

from the eyes of seven children.


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21

Today I saw two old friendsin the streetpassing

but did not know them, didnot stop

to talk. No longer the

self

who loved those men

among the crowds, this sidewalk

longer than I thought.A new clutter to

defendin new spaces.


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22

every man his own orphan

left himselfon the subway platform

countinghis image

one one

in passing windows

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