Our Andromeda Read Free Page B

be,

    the future me,
    finally the sharpest knife
    in the drawer.

    The pride is proud.
    The crowd is loud, like garbage dumping

    or how a brown bag ripping
    sounds like a shout
    that tells the town the house

    is burning down.
    Drowns out some small folded breath

    of otherlife: O that of a lioness licking
    her cubs to sleep
    in a dream of savage gold.

    O that roaring, not yet and yet
    and not yet dead.

    So many fires start in my head.

3. ARCANA

    Of one order are the mysteries of light
    and of another are those of fantasy

    Rider Tarot Deck instructions

Card 5: Hierophant

    I sit looking
    around expectantly,
    though really I want

    nothing but I’m
    so accustomed
    to waiting around

    I’ll just take whatever
    shows up. Or I look at
    things I don’t understand

    and want them
    though what I want
    is understanding.

    I take them anyway,
    turning them over
    and over in my hands

    in the dark
    as if holding such
    things can give me

    back some sense
    of what it was like
    to really want something

    regardless of what
    I had already
    or how long I’d waited.

    The wheels on the bus
    go round and round.
    Round and round.

    But I am going nowhere.
    I’ve not been waiting
    for no bus.

Card 12: The Hanged Man

    It seems unlikely that so much literature
    could be made from twenty-six letters.
    Doesn’t it seem it could all be boiled
    down to one sentence?

    After all, the entire volatile cosmos
    seems to circle and spin and rotate
    so you’d think round and ellipse
    were the only shapes possible.

    You’d think a square was an ungodly
    fluke, an aberration, not the life force
    behind writing tables and scaffolding.
    Not the product of a natural human math.

    The kind of math that says: if you
    are sentenced to be hanged
    and the rope breaks in the middle
    of your hanging, you are free to go.

    Such a sentence, though uttered
    without error, doesn’t say what it
    means: life may be a circle, but death’s
    elliptical, swinging and missing.

    Criminal, hangman, judge, and witness,
    each matchless and speechless. Why say
    anything, ever again, after such luck?
    Why not shut up and run?

Card 0: The Fool

    Yes, you, fool. You don’t fool
    me, you fraud.
I’m
the fool.

    I don’t care. I run without
    pants in winter, cock

    tucked into my asshole
    for warmth and a fun feeling.

    It looks good, right? I take
    my feet in my hands

    and fringe the public scaffold
    with my skunked stuff. Sexual

    and digestive. It’s so funny.
    Are you embarrassed?

    Why? You didn’t do
    anything but like it.

    Foolish reader, can’t like
    what you like.

    Like what you want to like.
    Do what you want to like

    to do. Don’t do what you don’t
    want to like to do.

Card 20: Judgment

    What did the stand of pines say
    to the herd of elephants
    wearing swimsuits
    and carrying large suitcases?

    â€œNice trunks!”

Card 14: Temperance

    The everyday truth
    of the night’s delectations
    appears for us in our dream.

    We all ate the same food
    and made the same love
    so we dream the same dream,

    which was: the infinite wine
    was rank, undrinkable, lost
    to a rot somehow familiar,

    a delusion or virus, perhaps
    from childhood, parents
    deep in their cups.

    It could have been worse.
    Upon waking, we might not
    have had or needed wine.

Card 7: The Chariot

    I smoke between one and three
    cigarettes a day.

    Sometimes a whole pack will last
    a week, sometimes three

    or sometimes I don’t keep track,
    just give them all away.

    I can always get them back.
    There isn’t a tree

    on the street I haven’t given
    the time of day.

    Time for us to meet, or maybe
    eat, between one and three.

    A cigarette or two or three
    with you can’t be beat.

    And sometimes I forget to eat,
    forget the pack, and that too

    is okay, you always say.
    What other way, but to

    forget, is there to endure
    the day, the street?

Card 9: The Hermit

    I burned a living rose in the fire,
    its