Jan Clausen

Initiation

The descent beckons / as the ascent beckoned.
                 —William Carlos Williams

I.

I fail not to imagine
armed robbery in the garden.

To love the world our roads made:
what’s involved?

Sumptuous witch hazel’s starry sponges.
Kreyol voices spangling the snow.

A torridness where Gertrude promenades
warbling “wife, wife”….

& girls come at me
throwing fast punches

tough sisters
of memory

palming
the vulval scrollwork

as in:
eros

deciduous.

II.

We fail
not to imagine

how the vicious
is various.

Photographs depict
stress positions.

Some sort of Tupperware party
with injections of Krazy Glue.

“A fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology
having a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail”

Rat laughter,
mouse histrionics

enliven the rungs
of wronging.

Go tell it on the platform
Brooklyn-bound

where Fela Kuti
jostles Sophocles:

Wake up, Mami—
we live in a wicked country.

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