Laynie Browne
from Antediluvian Sonnets
Snow light says good morning to—where are you
For however long—cry and lose to begin
Can’t stop reading the lake you conjure or
Elevate at will-tide—drop by beaded dross
And live like uncoded lines mesmerized by what
Isn’t, hasn't net or—set down em—press
Premonitions walk out across liriodendron
Curdled winter peony urns—look
Toward paste-on halos, cut glass traced dimension
All—keys fall invisibly around
Your uncertain projections
With cunning soft red fox tail wrapped round
The place you keep unsaid to suss
Stain now
from A Lava Step at Any Time
i.
Suddenly I wasn't in my room—though was
No longer mistaking lavender for walls even enfolded—though not enclosed
The room still looked exactly the same and yet suddenly I was certain
That “I” am “not”
A three-dimensional space with walls and floors
But that was just something I was seeing
An aspect of avatar
And where one lives embodied
Right now is only one plane
Or dimension of being
Also an insect in steps and stars
Not a cricket or a cicada but what?
A high whistle distinctly beginning
Pausing and then again—
The temperature rose to 82 degrees
Song of two-spotted tree cricket
A plaintive dissonant trill
Marked by a brief pause every few seconds
Ringing proceeded by stuttering notes
ii.
And then I saw in ringlets
Composed of time
An air that it wasn’t
The past that was broken
Only if I tried to carry it
And place it ahead of myself
Like a structure that no longer exists
Nonsensically—why try to approach
When it's not ahead or anywhere
Like a disappeared carriage
The contraption I feared releasing
Has not existed
Instead what I had agreed with myself
With which to part
Was not a matter of skin
Time or even memory or love
It was instead a faulty assemblage
A never fit closet of daunted
Darts of air
I agreed to release
Close-fitting notions of person
Hood which approximate being
With constrictive relation
Preventive constitution
Why would I want that?
Lambent
I used to think I needed flagellate rapacious light flames flowing or running
Over the surface of pinned authenticity, patrols, bitter sinks, stammer doves
Effulgence bathing floods as corrective, stone sipping libraries of garrulous
Capitulations, obliterating hair like milk, ships, green garrets, a ponderous office
Wisps, demeanor of lakes, blank petals, an electrical preface cast in wax volumes
Throat exquisitely synonymous with agitation—I used to think I needed the
Background of a body in order to do everything within the word, I mean a body not mine
Devoted, a knowing extension, a fondling of time, a promise to be other
Than cold, singular, abandoned, and yet it turns out I needed only to remember
My uncertainty was already great and then the invisible made it unthinkably larger
Vast—when at first the world fell at my furnace into more than a myriad
Remnants of loss I saw my attention fixed on countless ephemeral concepts
If not a single category used in the classification of pronouns, possessive determiners
And verb forms, according to whether they indicate the speaker
The addressee, or a third party—is present—still, no “I” is separate
Not even hazel distances or this language I speak petting melancholy
Emeralds, mirror with message, cloud with legs, quiet with child.
Laynie Browne’s latest publications are: Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar, 2023), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter, 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox, 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave, 2022). She edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on the Poet’s Novel (Nightboat, 2021) and co-edited I’ll Drown My Book, Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues, 2012). She is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship and The National Poetry Series Award. Recent collaborations include a public art project, “Dawn Chorus,” a curated constellation of poetry in thirteen languages by twenty-eight writers engraved in The Rail Park in Philadelphia with visual artist Brent Wahl and an accompanying podcast.