the blunting wind by matt dennison

The Blunting Wind

The lion of the paw’s left hand
arrives a blunting wind; an orb
de-globe’d, intact among, spins
in a cot, handy house nearby. In
inks the tint among the spine tree
bust, gnawn granite-like upon soft
curtains motoring wrong this love's
beholden—this earthened weapon’s
next. In dreams I balance the tweezer
en pointe, legs outstretched, angle de la
ballerine enforced, sufficient with the deep
squirrel’s feet, the freeze that brought me unto
the tomb, the teeth. My head on your head, bower
ghost, weep-testicles out the crime, nipple the bone
-shot sea. Cleanse your house in the great unknowing
of the vain details like winters that mimic good skin:
“Denmark, Denmark” coo’d the arrowhead rocked
against the table. “No!—Spain!” re-insurrects the
danger. This is to be the cutting year to lactate
rough dosages the one thing backside trees
ignite: the ill-buried ringmaster’s hat or
gloves dressed in fleck-rumple whites
tallions twisting his crypt, losing
a taste for the gr'panned funeral,
the time unripe for his favorite
cigarette, his wonder-whiskey,
his fat-back cheese. Why, then,
when thus covered, the baffling
self that is what was so, the labia
lens I view through my depths and
re-launch rested codicil upon its legs
following room to room the dream again
gut-wrapped in clip-knives-breath-alleys-time-
jars valley-tipped upon rain-walks would I suddenly
like not to age without? The dead bird now a glazen cage
upon my Lady’s lap, tortoise-wrapped to keep her not,
the intelligence of the horse’s crepuscular damage
unwinged, burlap’ed. I am but a portal: some
equal time-law of the self de-foreign’d to
breath—my sta'tue, the manageress a'
spoons, devolves, water-waifs all
night in night all night. Amen.