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MERCER
BUFTER
Mercer Bufter lives in Brooklyn, NY where he attends NYU. He hails from Walkersville,
Maryland.
LETHE
A felled cypress, before me,
not yet planks, or studs, or smoothed;
routed, planed, or given any name.
But felled, growing mossy.
I stayed there and imagined,
with no other set of shoes, pants,
shirts, no women, men, no effigies
imbued with meaning.
It was not winter. No children,
no snowmen dressed and set loose
on the preserved landscape. It never
snowed there. I remembered the North.
I stayed to imagine carving the cypress
into a ship with an ornamental bow,
with flourishes to rival flora, ivory
from stolen tusks, polished walking sticks.
Because I was alone there I saw myself
carving it easily; there was no industry
to discourage my fantasy. It would be
like scooping seeds from a cantaloupe.
I looked down the length of the water,
unable to remember from which direction
I’d come, or how long before. I walked
a few steps; I noticed a felled cypress
that had not yet been turned to any use.
FIRST CRUSADE
Purposeful visions, said hard in the raid—visions of starring pilgrims,
devised by themselves and by themselves wetly sired:
tacking into the wind, sails breathing ragged,
coming in that sudden mooring of bow to sand.
Darn my eyelashes tight—here’s a needle. The stitching-pattern
is there, just follow it; close my wounds.
Then, after forcing the temple door, under ordinances of new light,
I see, illuminated there—her foreign body the whole land—
grave Eris lying prone before the gate
as if in jest—that’s her game. Approach roughly, a voice said,
she’s craned there, spread, in heat.
copyright
© Mercer Bufter
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