Summer 2019: Eternity or Bust.

by Brendan Hamilton.

Collage poem composed from a 19th century joke book and a myology guide to ravens

a spree wouldn’t be a spree if Mose wasn’t thar
having completely and carefully plucked the Sun
Mose spits in your bowl
and the soup does not hiss

open the mouth to its full extent
pry ponderous jaws
where small and slender tendon
surrounds the periphery of the ear-conch
a triangular form, found at a tavern
covers the mandibular articulation
in which fashion imprisons men’s necks
O Syksey! don’t you cry

raise the feathers of the chest
where a body can get rich
see, if Music were the food of Love
Mose be a fellow whose mother
weaned him on Salt Fish
some dirt-face boy in Canal street
nothing but his boots to shelter him
–Guns and Bludgeons–
a plucky Dragoon
counterfeiting the flexor
the large quill-butts of the pinion, or tail
long as a pumpkin vine

carry an incision through the shore
Mose and his ship-load of mintdrops
are volunteers of the Machine
one flocking cosmopolitan family of birds
drain the rivers dry
an old chap in Hackensack
Lennox is flummoxed he getteth a sight
fibres of muscle pass directly o’er worldly pelf
the humerus being raised by its contraction
Pistols and Bowie Knives, Red Shirts and big Hats
a marked tendency to ossify Dame Justice
the forearm of the Raven bends

a beautiful pair of muscles exist in the Raven
upon which Mose has bestowed
a suitable name
spelling out Lize in the Golden Sands, with a diamond period
it depresses the humerus

reflect the flap, the skin laid open
Goslings, Gold, and Glory
parafornalie of vertebral economy
everybody here knows Mose
eyes big as sarsers
Mose exerts the Sun’s
forked fibres O yes he did
toward the radial margin
his tendinous head could lick any man
laps cool punch, blackstrap,
brandy smash and cobbler
over cartilaginous plate
–graceless wagabone!
a man’s foot cut off by a shadow
horny sheath of the bill
but nothing to put up the spout

Sources:

The Ball of Yarn. New York: Cozans, 1854.

Shufeldt, Robert W. The Myology of the Raven (Corvus Corax Sinuatus): a Guide to the Study
of the Muscular System in Birds. London and New York: MacMillan, 1890.

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