SIX WORKS
BY HUGH TRIBBEY

FOLD-IN #4

Author's Absence so to kill out here

pirates in lazy billows

identical brown shaft becomes smoke

indeterminacy's implied existence to burn well

discover smoking these Joi

loose fitting these up

escape Derridean for a while

identity by sticker on the box

withdraw anything to do

both forms of his fantasies

to hoard withdraw a budget

about the pain in my sinuses

Promises about the stone

first stanzas for an hour or so

splendid compulsive bitch

Immortality with a week

failed attempts to judge Wooten

his own pleasure comes up enough

in the next stanza do the state-mandated pro

faith to use if finally finds

inflated calculating

Raleigh's self-importance blowing and going

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MISNOMER HELIOTROPE TOWERS

misnomer heliotrope towers myopic smokes
crooked profess carapaceous carriage
genital mustang button donor tangent
hateful hyphen vanish gossip ply
jellyfish cluster grunt encrusted
bridge bloated riddle berry-black
hula-hoop rapids spoon unshaven
plankton thin innate crime humiliate
acupunture contiguous pouch upchuck
unsunny flirty afford lead overheated
teeth zephyrs frayed preppie blow
hotel bulldoze mellifluous spoil
crispy nostalgia kneel Israeli
wiry urge adverse dearest produce
maintenance ambulance wave
petrified overclimb soil hold
random fat farfetched daquiri
light stiff bless slide flyswatter
absolute shift overemphasis
corridor stare severe majestic
dead pop boundless enough
tripe biomechanics sneeze
terrible toss press skip lame
habit hum trace terror serve
cough groan burning bathe violet

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SONNET SEVENTY MEETS CHEYENNE COYOTE & STAR

That you are given shall not be your Great Mystery Power,
For Coyote's medicine was ever yet the Coyote.
The nothing of Great Mystery is wise.
A fool that came in mind's brightest star.
So you be dear, life does round.
Your sky be more tired, being held of star.
For numb socket, the highest does wait,
And you wait, a low, near star.
You have gone, by the Coyote of a bad mistake.
Either not down, or minute, being dropped,
Yet this your winter cannot be your earth,
To hit ground, evermore flattened:
        If some deerskin of Great Mystery Power amused not your life,
        Then you, old timer of stars, should fall.

[Mad lib. Diction of Cheyenne myth. Syntax and function words of
Shakespeare's Sonnet 70.]

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A SPADE

A spade, sharp & bright
A spade of hot forges & a frozen albatross
A shovel can ruin
What nothingness produces
Destitution and desecration
Delighting toads
A spade from the Baltic
Sparkles cacophony in Northumbria
A spade of lost poets
Irrigating all heat and all fire
A spade a ray dares to another ray
And eats rays of the sun
A shovel soothes feeling,
Gulps horror, sparks Destiny
A spade strikes the battalions dumb

[a homophonic translation of Jorge Luis Borges' "Fragmento"]

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LOUIS 16 SEES VEGAS AT THE LAST GUILLOTINE

pew pew pew
quest says quiet pew
set Louis 16 loafing in a mall cove
etc. saw tight tombs dancing lay panic
saw tight poverty
parceling quill fate frogs loose on 21st & Jardeau
a plight dull sang do lane negligent
at tools sorted by salutes
quite jocular do say veil the carcass
do chin crave or fond dunes levitate
or milling about at the linen sale
quite an odor of low tempo do pouring
comes low floors delights of pew bells
quiet lay dispatches refusing the brother
parcel quelling reprimand an ode of doves
quite a donor at Louis 16
lay drop divine do craving
comes a child dancing a levitation

[Source: "Louis XVI S'en Va A La Guillotine," Benjamin Peret. Homophonic
translation.]

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MAN COPES

Man copes tune occupies past fossils
kick just cruise key apples profound chaff neat

comes a sanguine emperor Dan less branch branching
to tripped timers to tea debates

Lee listen do parrots see souvenirs done suture corpse
prostrate surge the cleft done graft

jet test vestments etc. tea revives
scour do ordinary clapping

glimpse delayed collards
combine profound foreigners
excavate secrets sue the past

Lee calm insinuates a black lair do long neat
pare last pieces disjointed at liquor cribbing

Allah gets seconds or to the disparity
comes tune shards then the mare

[Homophonic translation of "Mon Corps" by Jacques Dupin]

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