Honours of war

I was struck 

by the phrase “to take things to their logical conclusion.” I was stuck 

on the word “occlusive” 

in phonetics, when pronunciation stops air. Talking makes me die 

but I have to. In physiology the jaw closed, I had tried, 

been impressed by the blockage 

as a happiness. 

I turned on my secret passage last night 

It was boarded up 

and surprised I was 

with a readiness 

to eschew my own tradition 

And walk among men. 

I was so beset one season 

by Helena’s outcry 

Spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me 

Spurning, striking, neglecting, 

losing 

openly 

Illocutionary 

and known to me in the way 

That as a prophet I speak the words it is my task to speak.

There is a brazen grace shared 

by the favourite and the leper. 

Bare, bestowing tacitly 

the pardon 

that itself 

affirms the crime. 

Sometimes I am nothing enough and can 

slip through the grates in the street where wet leaves gleam in a silence like 

socialites. Useless 

papers. 

“You will come into unfathomable fortune.” 

Faithfully. With everything 

At the end I get away

Act I

For months i slept in a red room 

The bed sunk 

in the middle 

like a jinxed ship 

like a mouth 

that i rode in as a cradle 

At night i have a vague address 

And i go without haste 

And i take no direction 

With the wind i am swathed in a crude sail 

And it soaks up the blood 

And it makes me of metal 

I reject the window silently it rolls back a tongue 

the mourning dove trades its graces 

My eyes close 

The sky clots 

Tolls the hour 

I let it go by 

Passive acts may be gorgeous 

Multiplied presents 

Named belief 

Named relief 

The jubilus in a key so high 

at the human ear it elapses unheard 

I have nothing to declare 

Though i heed a strange breath 

from a doomed jaw 

carved of lost rubies and 

Miming 

the cadence of rhapsody

Act II

Demused 

We hold no Memory 

We slide between propensities 

First as tragedy and then as tragedy again

True

Life is pathological research, a repository of

decisive failures, mortifications of the flesh

Limping on I whimpered 

at my wealth 

Neurotic liberties 

An embarrassment of riches

Conflating games 

of strategy 

with whims of luck 

Lacking, the year proved me 

no rose, morose and 

pacified 

Passive-eyed since the snow 

I was only acting 

as the spirit moved me 

I would say 

as the apparition came 

An alabaster sword in a sheath of clement sun

It cuts 

I weep, quixotic 

overcome 

On a moderate day

Paris J. B. Reid is a poet and researcher living in Texas. Her writings have been published in Heavy Traffic Magazine, seasons of des pair Quarterly, Animal Blood Magazine, and elsewhere.