LIGHT AT THE END OF THE WORD

CHERYL PALLANT

B LA ZE VO X[ B OO KS ]
Buffalo, New York
Light at the End of the Word
by Cheryl Pallant
Copyright © 2023

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

A number of the works in this collection have been published in the following journals and
anthologies: Empty Mirror, Trance Poetics, Rogue Agent, Spacecraft Project, Deep Time Journal,
Vestiges, and Bridging the Waters III.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Lawrence Pallant

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-448-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946430

BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a
key to another world.

Anne Carson

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are

connected to rather than what we are separate from.

Terry Tempest Williams

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life
was born.

Clarice Lispector
I
What’s Okay

If not in the longing then in the lasting. If not in permanence then in permeable
skin in unpoured liquids. Things falls apart when they don’t congeal. I heard her
scream and then I didn’t. She doesn’t know how to hold him inside or how to

hold herself in. If she were here to say she would stay but she stumbled on the
pavement. If he knew the surgical procedure he would make the incision but
his virtues excluded precision and parallel parking. This is no laughing matter.

She lives in the land of men who live at the hand of meant and corrupted reach
muscling weight like a barge of uncontainables shipped from afar and docked at
a nearby port. She said she was okay. She said she likes her eggs scrambled but

was out of cream. I would have told her I was writing but she opened the shades
and grazed her forehead with the back of her hand. He said he was okay. He said
he stores boxes in the attic but the door led to the locked basement and he forgot

the key. I would have wrung my hands but he shook the drawer open to a faded
map with marks concealing names of towns. It’s a fluke that I laughed. There’s a
hint of lunacy in the spittle that never reached the sink. There’s a stool where we

sat to face the unforgivable. I’m okay except when lightning strikes the oak in
the yard and branches break and blisters burst during cleanup. I’m okay when a
truck careening down the highway applies brakes, when you don’t pull the trigger

and when the space between words dreams us a better idea and no idea at all.

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Not Quite a Secret

This is about me and about you in surround-a-sound. Everything possible

is more than purple eyeshadow and laced shoes. This is nothing here without

you or me. Not this glass of water or candle. Speaking about me is a poke
at you. By taking everything so seriously everything is so serious. I’m kidding.

If listening you know what’s true. I don’t expect you to believe in magic but urge
dwelling in possibilities and secrets. I won’t blab if you don’t. You’ve kids to watch

and wounds from war and work. This is not about repairing the ripped screen door
to keep out mosquitoes. Answers don’t justify garbles. What I hear is what I heard

you heard what I hear. Consider jamming the audition and unplugging the speakers.

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Another Before Me

How do we get there without first being here? Everything beside myself is
outside but the door unhinged. My conjunction is your dissociation because
your map omits coordinates and configures balance as shoddy which is how

you crossed the room. Nothing outside resembles the space inside including
the whistle and folded rug. Try again. When I intimate myself in laughter the
solo emerges and violence stops. I drink desalinated tensions by bowing and

lunging from a center stabilized by defying norms. What do you think fringe
festivals are for? Sometimes what comes out in the wash doesn’t. Sometimes
what’s downstream is another’s up yours. Endless beauty gains beginnings and

hearts sliding away from ache. How we sit resembles the delicacy of filo dough.
Someday there’ll be a great awakening but until then we dream. The subliminal
is coming to a tongue near you heeding insomnia’s call. Ready for the great yawn

my ears tell me what you won’t hear and marginalize. Dam rivers and streams.
Dam flows knowing into unknown. By enslaving rest we don’t get to the rest.
Balance paddle-free downstream where the tide reverses. I stuck the daisy behind

my hears. You consider my face rash a blastema but fear exaggerates crude.
Beauty unwilts petals. Before me there was another me and afterward too.
Count me in your calculations. The great yawn generates a suspicious chasm

until we invest wholesale in emotions. A face in the oak stirs a crowd’s revelry.
In the alchemy of becoming, my business is stashing attention for flow. Earth
rises through fissures. Consider me a seismologist but mitochondria rules the hay.

You misinterpret No.

Let me translate: Oh.

Even with drainage the ground floods. Everywhere overlaps. Let me plug my nose.
Refrain from blowing away possibility. My voice prompts crickets to chirp. Freedom
punctuates a paraphrase. Looks into the back of eyes show the world seed and sow.

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On a Spectrum

The locked door is opening. Push it slightly and

turn attention. You haven’t heard a hyena laugh
nor sensed the bones where wept stood. Flush flee

from fun, not perish, scratch, bite, or fuss. Exhale

your ex’s and why’s from being. Openings oh so
oh penning. My word against naught measures

neglect and presence. They are not who they think

they are. They are not not not a tantrum of trials.
Do not kill. Do not seance and desist since

sensing matters the immortal equivalent. The door

is blowing open. The house heats cool. We are.
We are not okay without a spectrum of effort.

am

not

who you

think past du’jour a passive adjourn. I cataract,

you myope. A poem’s viscera is flesh made word
made flesh pulsing minutiae a provisional dance.

Render the beautiful possible without explosives

without null and void. Order in the courts accounts
for only so much. Words jazz wants needing but

counts don’t add up, not without taunts putting us down.

If you ask how we’re to live, listen to flowers preach.
Let brooks and wind howl. Hear circadian beats unbeaten.

Over a beer at the beach, smell a poem unfictionalize time.

To rise against the tide, part with the impartial.

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A Fall

He toppled down the stairs and hit his head on the rail. Blood trickled
from his lips, a sign of words to come. Broken bones worst criticism

without a stiff drink. A mishap cannot be mistaken for a woodpecker.

Tissues grow despite age and circumstance. I raced to his limp body

and placed my hand on his brow. “Can you stand?” I said. He neither
nodded nor murmured. He didn’t know touch. He didn’t know I could

fly him to my nest. Besides worms, I gathered twigs for his swells and
fed him the remedy of place. He sat up dazed. There are no words to

translate what he didn’t say. He looked at me like never before looking.

He might have mistaken me for a moth until I knelt beside him like a

stream he hadn’t fished. My hand laid on the tremble of his refusal.

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Deescalating Hurt

Lifting them up meant putting me down. A torqued hurt scattershots

blame and won’t stem blood. Fingers misunderstand rain cycles upon
soil decimated crops. Count on the biome to materialize bacteria. Count

on more than the hand in sight. Insight is half farce, half fleece, half wisdom.
Halves don’t add up like phone plans and shelved books. No secret in dancing
with being with gate, gate, parasamgate. Activate the belly and breathe the glow.

You can follow my meaning but you can’t have my say. Replenish flesh through
game and play for the sake of any and all welcome in the cathedral where gods
unfold blankets for the tried. When you lose everything for gain hidden eyes

open. Looking straight uncrooks the neck. The more curious we are the less
remote is impossibility. I won’t go into details here. Every gesture is an invitation.
Remember where you home yourself and follow me to the back room if you want.

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For the Shelf

We who let words have their way with us get out of the way. In lineated
breath flush with deliberation we sigh and render the couch occupied.

This is how to tug our boat without sink and float towards the ineluctable.
A paragraph in sentience claims boundaries have no claim like the wettest

of wanted kisses. No harm in this arm’s race onto the page. No one suffers
strangulation by a poet’s hand. In versely directs no menace or negation but

evanescence emerging, syllabic stops, implosions, and transmissions for hears

tuned, hara unadorned, the yes of risk after risk after page. A polar bear needs

its ice and we our page. Let me tell you a story: I appear as a character in
another’s tale. Don’t let the craft come between us.

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Encountering

I’ve no business here despite the call into everyone’s

busyness. I charge cards to smooth transactions and

avoid insults. You say you like my hair over my years

and I say the job goes to the most qualified which

excludes legs spread. I bought a trench coat for purpose

and ironed my unsuitable. I’m concerned about a way

forward without mass suffering and extinction. Call me

sensitive but I prefer walking in light and wishing for sane.

My hope is that we stay in our lane to exit the fight and

keep blood within skin. Have you traveled the alley of

your abhor? Have you asked your shadow out? The crux
of the matter traps matters and leads to argue membership

size and who’s in charge, a master alert for a slave. The world
will go on without me but what I hear stinks. My business is

mutual awakening regardless of the toilet seat position. Say

we meet at the café to shift the sands of sorrows. I’ve witnessed

enough PTSD to last a lifetime. Before tomorrow, there’s this:

Pass the water. Pass the flame. If you feel you may pass out, then

it’s time to gasp intimacy. Don’t swear off the small stuff nor fuel
the foil. I will not say it another way and will take myself away.

Alignment is central to awakening. Center with a pitchfork in

tune with dreams that rouse another to root. Expose shadows,

cut chains and untie the noose. I’ve crossed the desert weak kneed
in the burn of not belonging. I’m writing up a report as we speak.

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