EVERYTHING

TURNS ON A DELICATE MEASURE

MAUREEN OWEN

B LA ZE VO X[ B OO KS ]
Buffalo, New York
Everything turns on a delicate measure
by Maureen Owen
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.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Linda Norton

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-450-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946480

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

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everything turns on a delicate measure

was it the same night they were to meet

or had that night already passed

how fragile was the night they were to meet

never mentioned again

the eye for lack of direction will settle

beneath the shallows or in the grove of restless trees

unclear hand in hand if you’re game

not more than that or then a sense or wanting to be left alone
against a pair of floral pillows

there is only the pedestrian saddled

by a passion

and the tracks of the ginger snap

weak faith that you were

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 I won’t kid you — I’m not formlessness

Profound isn’t a mere reply shifting

streams of turbulent penance

getting there in one piece I felt forgotten

on the heels of how she put it

Rouge the whole mess

low barge huffing and puffing caresses

the soles of our feet the

palms of our hands a

fear of the desert even ours

a bear traveling in the sky

a single orb holding

all whether

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Pentecost

I first saw the word

Facsimile on the nameplate
of a race horse’s halter a deep
chestnut gelding I a kid standing
in the shed row mid afternoon sun setting
his coat a red orange fire he leaning from
his stall door

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 when we were crazy pretty
light rushed in these
skeleton trees and there
was a goddess blue as dusk
who seemed to know our
names

El Perdon

on bended knee the skeleton

apologizes to the skeleton

is it too late?

O bony patella ivory kneecap hung up

wall side of my morning crunched to tin to stucco to
us
only so far untied from one another only so far let go
linked and dangling a circle of sheet ghosts ringing a
tree

Scoop some water from the valley as if cobalt to a shrine

the universe expands and with it time is leaving us
our hearing is disappearing scientists capture
the sound of black holes colliding
one billion light years away a fleeting chirp

let the bones talk! chalky

& fluent evicted from biology riddled
& cranking flannel & cotton from coat hooks of shoulders
gravity’s wave has whispered to us! Let the bones the desperate bones
the atrocious snoring monochrome bones the outrageous sneezing penitent
bones
apologize one more time to each other

then let’s wave Let’s wave back to the gravitational wave

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 for Patricia Spears Jones

juggling and put them he

went on metamorphic a man in pearls

it is the nature of the afternoon to speak to us in parables

deep-seated definite that poignant that

reveals our cafecito one’s last affair with the throes of torpor
salt-breeze suffused of salt pans

& always city oddly angled elevated

stuffed into a powdery yellow stillness unspoiled by
hardly enough at first glance an equation

friable

elliptical questions simply no way to tidy

silence would involve withdrawal
making would at one end be slim would be keeps

as the grooves of smooth variance

that draw on diverse

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a step away from stepping away

no time to work on the time line

slowly they disappeared into a

curtain of falling snow

the one who ironed the shirt someone arrived in

as if the thought had just occurred Put
the yellow there the painter might be thinking

galleries & restaurants roamed the streets

not nearly as large or elaborate

for visitors on tight budgets all these things

one’s word & one’s silence when nothing
never got far enough for us

we’re not on a straw mat or in possession of

Terriers those feisty little dogs

how magically she reconfigured herself on the frame

that is always part of the pictorial

or nights when I open my eyes to see the light fixture

scuttle across the ceiling

like a river on its side

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 Captions of agate and sulphuric bubble

that she had irony

a nod to bustling
spotted that was not
every spend getting more beaten

abstrusity

give me wall! into a chance modern at its foot of shoes pinned

forlornly to a message

not simply who finds everything serves

agog white underbelly of plane brushing bluing continual

agreeing to be impossible between my house and theirs

at night I go to bed with everything I’m thinking

nothing wearable wanting hibiscus blossoms wrap around themselves
flippantly elegant an awry intimacy so unaware
so un serious weren’t we also written in that order

or saturated so

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standing on the pedals keeps you nimble

from the very top of envy

half of the people burn

ultraviolet

or

where did May Kasahara’s letters go?

… had he received them… it seemed he had…

what ocean reaches to us

uneasily where a sundry carried gathers
accumulation all around
which is more stubborn than the other would
be turned out into be on your own
in all but the black seaweed
that look green gives us from
its hillside that grimace of the sky that river
winds by shakes its head that earth burps under our footsteps
we jump up and down on it we jump up and down up
& down we are jumping on it jumping up & down dark
waves of seagrass
hot pink roses voodoo voodoo
voodoo roses

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everyone has lost a memory

she pokes me as
the altar boy hoists a
long poled crucifix “look
Jesus has a broken arm”

the snapped forearm swings rhythmically

on it’s pinning

Marilyn Monroe never takes her gloves off

through the whole performance
the other singer has to do all the finger
snapping

time to get out the thread

the swishing of a detail veers
perhaps our brains do all the guesswork winking

we see the nose and upper mouth piece of the iron war mask
fastened with tiny latches shaped as doves

& know
heat thick & soundless
baffles the leaves but

the tree shades itself

for Bill Berkson

1939-2016

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Liquitex my darling Fatty acid bloom my love
white haze newsprint and wax paper saying it still does

Or
except various tho she headed

Must we die Mesopotamia

clocks set right but the time is wrong

You can help me tie your shoe for you

a little crystal blister found in a grain field

My mother dreamt of the wind the ponies

drifting up into the thick dust draft of it

Tiny rectangular forms with legs rushing

about in an ocher glaze

rolls of crepe twisting in manes & tails

wild eyed for oxygen & water

We bring our own territory with us

terra cotta louche and long it’s dawn now taken

we pose clad uniquely

fungible
the window behind us

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Popped

Or

A cat so black it had only eyes

A patch of high grass at the edge of our confidence

on the floor of the brain the hippocampus reclines an odalisque with raised arms
clothes not bothering (fragrances) spicy amber Somehow inhale it now bergamot
our night catapults way up & under her vision a mirror

metropolis eyes sleeping in a dish the only ones not looking at the camera

and this all about how she meant to stay a maquette without being done or having not been
done eliciting how many and just as much by the next subtraction

did looks got in her way? holding the breaths that

flat reveals lined in rubber without closure the Balm wasn’t seamless

she had scrambled her directions and now she was rambling

in an aura of replicas she circled herself

like private moonlight on a beach just passing through

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