Venus in Cazimi

by Robert Gross

        If a planet is right at the core of the Sun,
        within 0° 17′ then it is utterly consumed

Smitten, she retires
            into the sovereign forge
            the molten coronet

oozed between Scylla and Charybdis
            between love’s labors lost
            and love worn dumb
                        under the smooth workings
                                    of the whorled thumb
                        of the executioner

Each cloven heart
            a burning bush
            a blind spot
                        a retinal detachment
from a passion hearsed and rehearsed
         
                        Dido in flaming
                                    Carthaginian array
                        through the quick and the dead
                                    of the pyre

Diorama Leda and the Taxidermy God

by Robert Gross

There are no words for
the way into

the thicket of silence
the mute swan

stuffed and mounted
hovering above
the bathing beauty

a solitary conception
of negative space
and feathered lust

a cold calculus of a hot
imaginary

number series randomized
behind glass

on a plaster of paris
river bank

painted flat
with real feathers
and consenting illusions

Theogonies—a Dithyramb

by Robert Gross

The power of air
            in the thicket of a shrouded thought
the redemption of the world
                        through water and forgetting
         
the oven has gone out
the ashcan has fallen

The power of a coin
            in the street—a godlike boulder
the redemption of the world
            through stain and stupefaction

the key chain snaps
the small talk scatters

At the start it was all
            teapots and doilies
                        the proper parson’s parlor
all potpourri
                        and phillipians
the kettle wheezed
                        and it ruptured
            shattering the wedgewood
                                    driving the flock
                        gibbering into jivey dialectics

The power of sleaze
            in the scramble up the stairs
the redemption of the world
            through rock crystal and rot
the mutation of alien thoughts
            in bed and boardroom

What is the dance for
            dry rot and distance
                        the wordless weeping wobble
all chainlink
                        and charleston
the jeté freezes
            at the jolt of a jeremiad
the blindfolded danseur caught
            between barre and backroom
                         arabesques
                                    in sharp-ribbed panic

The power of grief
            in the remaking of manifestos
the redemption of the world
            through whirlwind and wisecrack
the tea cosy is split
            the thoroughfare has become a thicket

Exiles of the Adjacent Chamber

by Robert Gross

We go through so many bodies in one another
A melancholy of six or seven behind the blinds
Stitch swarms of ravens on our coverlet
Roam in packs from waves to wasps to wolves

A melancholy of six or seven behind the blinds
Turn up the intersection on our conversation
Roam in packs from waves to wasps to windows
Encrypt a snarl of alertness on our bodies

Turn up the inquisition on our conversions
The static sparks of secret interference
Encrypt a snarl of aversion on our bodies
Scatter reconvene and flock again

Static sparks of secret illumination
Stick swarms of ravings on our coverlet
Scatter reconvene and flocks of pain
We go through so many bodies in one another

Shameless

by Robert Gross

My dead lover returns
on his pale torso wounds
the size of ravens’s eggs

Which don’t heal when
you’re dead he tells me
but don’t hurt either

I know he’s dead because
he wouldn’t let me see them
if he were alive

He says I just came by
to see how you’re doing
He sprawls on the sofa

I used to wear a blindfold
when we had sex I learned
to spin a fantasy and he

was only ardent when unseen
embarrassed by his body
long before the cancer sapped it

I only saw him naked
a week before he died
even then he didn’t know

and would have ordered
me out of the sickroom
but the dead have no shame

at what they exhibit and
the survivors learn at length
to be indifferent too

The Lovers Observe the Moon Under Arrest

by Robert Gross

Talk about the moon as a mushroom:
a fleshy obscenity sprung up
under cover of darkness

meant to be arrested at midnight
without memory or remorse
thirty-seven degrees from the horizon

booked in the nodding night court
mindless before high priests
who do not grasp its transit

cannot finger the musty
deliquescence of summer into fall,
the funky quick decay of thought

into sensations, the prison break
of a convicted self into a felony
of infinite quick fragments.

The authorities dare not interrogate
the moon in terms of silence.
They sentence it to death.