from DEAR RHINOCEROS

Jamalieh Haley

 
 
 

flame tree rupture in a december throat sung south.
an alhambra of color, new breathing.
desperado del morocco la sole.
brothers, hang your hymns from a bough that open macrophone of the plains, step step.
that big sound diamond stud rough up the back of a woman, sits alone.
valencia cloth cut around her head juicy couture like someone’s name invokes a maker.
all sound includes this, and screams, arrests the flatline.
sure, a meridian with peaks and valleys.
and without is still a meridian.
a body losing heart is still a body.

we come upon a village.
we examine an intermediary field folded into the wind.
find it fastened against a tidy cutting of limbs.
a drift is ancient in the falling off.
one animal nails another.
the mill.
and the cross hatched to suffer the grass torn up at the roots.
an elk grazes on its knees, a brutal vocation.
its muzzle tight wanderings levied against the pink sky hushed and poured over us from a coffer of ghosts we look up to.
the milk bath and the blood.

a white party.
we all add up to the Marriott Kigali.
our dress blows up the interior of a bouquet account of several other hotels inside our processional hearts.
professional concierge gift blackening a banquet of moon rocks.
what are these treating a flavor of dirt to our lips.
a ballroom is more than we are, another African chemistry Hotel la Printemps, where your vein streaks in crème fresh a dance of it opening.
confessional bloom at Gorillaz Volcano, hotel teenage heart, boom.
overcoming that blow of hot whispers, then maze drum in the ear.
low rhythm turning our souls over its rainbow.
remember the Alpha Palace in the Park of Swords.
they stood in the ground as prophets to the city of lost people among felled trees black arts and roses dropping their heads to our master of ceremonies.
our white party.

the numbers of dead or almost.
violence strata is pylon and lace in the sides of buildings.
lattice truck like bullet shadow play upon shadow.
our thing may be to leave our families and count holes (bodies).
our thing may be data without the meta.
our thing may be joint death—a séance of giving money away that hurts.
one person may hold in his hand a perpetual fist of dollars begging another person to do something about it.
one failure may double up suddenly one body may fall on top of another.
new things come with swift machete.
little parties of the flesh.
little pill popping personal injury.
a little rupture multiplied.
I’ll kneel down in the grass and count your lacerations each like a quiver blown open.
too many numbers out of confinement, dancing in the stock tanks, my hand mower tally of I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
the reality of numbers back-assed-blister the reality of you.
my stats, meet your stat.
this guilt is the homonymce of all things.





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JAMALIEH HALEY lives in Portland, Oregon where she co-curates If Not For Kidnap and teaches writing. Her work has appeared in Interrupture, Sink Review, Everyday Genius, Sixth Finch, and she is the author of Strange Tarot (Poor Claudia, 2014).