Issue 34: Joel Chace

from AGAINST WHICH

            Event switch.  Naturally, chaos ensues.  Each

            night, they move the whole fair,

            finding a nearby field or clearing. 

            All stars are like letters that

            inscribe themselves at every moment.  Chaos

            equals reality.  The populace just loves

            this; the next morning, pretending they’re

            clueless, they search eagerly.  I have

            only the impression of looking curiously,

            from outside, at a child or

            at a young man who happens

            to be myself.  Reality equals nothing

            left to choose.  Down along the

            river, driving a tractor, eyes misted,

            he thinks of his dark-haired beauty.

           The vision is such that seeing

          and seen are one.  He lifts

            his head exactly when the elm

            branch knocks him off and under

            the wheel.  Over rushing water, something

            dips, rises, dips, and rises.  A

            flight of the Alone to the

                            Alone.

               Intense itch:  toes, fingers, ears, eyelashes,

               eyes   Life here with the things

               of the earth is a sinking,

               a defeat, a failing of the

               wing. Not a single inch of

               body that isn’t inflamed.  My God,

               take away these boils and blisters

               and warts.  The boy steals a

               match from the pantry.  Out behind

               his house, he lights several papers

               tosses them into a bush  –  leafless,

               dry  –  then watches fire slide up

               that building’s façade.  He has given

               over the possible to the mechanics

               of matter and His creatures’ autonomy.

               As the flames make their way

               from that end, his family and

               neighbors carry tables, wardrobes, clothing out

               the other.  The future is made

               of the same stuff as the

               present.  They don’t realize he’s been

               missing, so he helps.  Once they

               remove what they can, his sibling

               points to all their belongings scattered

               over the side lawn:  They look

               as if they’re just waiting for

               us to put up a new

               house, around them.  At that, their

               great aunt  –  who’s touched  –  laughs, loud

               and long.  Great by that power

               whose strength is powerlessness, great by

               that wisdom which is foolishness, great

               by that hope whose form is

               madness.  Someone asks him why he’s

                   so intently scratching his neck.

               Intense itch to jump right into

               that stream  –  cold rush winding across

               a hayfield into the river.  Cold

               rush   –  cold so cold it’s fire. 

               If we go down into ourselves,

               we find that we possess exactly

               what we desire.  Same stream that

               took a little girl, never found. 

               Same stream that one winter took

               two workhorses, the left one’s left

               hoof skittering on ice and off

               the narrow wood plank bridge, pulling

               himself, his partner, the spreader into

               that water, and hurling the farmer

               onto the opposite bank.  Long, forever

               minutes.  It is precisely because there

               is nothing within the One that

               all things are from it.  Two

               horses’ whinnies, snorts, turning to screams,

               their legs to nothingness in frigid

               fire.  Screams.  Horses’ screams.  The man’s

               helpless weeping. This infinite distance between

               God and God.   And still, now,

               an itch to leap through those

               sun dapples on the surface of

                             darkness.

            Request list returned unopened.  Moxxed.   Wrepped.  

            Inhape.  The day of judgment is

            either approaching, or it is not.

            If it is not, then there

            is no cause for an adjournment;

            if it is, I choose to

            be found doing my duty. I

            wish therefore that candles may be

            brought   Geplete.  Fippen.  Lussed.   5 p.m.

            mid-January light falls across a snow

            field.  We must not run after

            it, but we must fit ourselves

            for the vision and then wait

            tranquilly for it.  Looking through that

            amethyst light  –  past pain, fear, grief  – 

            one perhaps understands death’s gentleness, death’s

            love.  A saintliness demanded by the

            present moment, a new saintliness, itself

                  without precedent.  Jeyy.  Hulloveyy.     

Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision,  Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail.  His full-length collections include matter no matter (Paper Kite Press), Humors (Paloma Press), Threnodies (Moria Books), fata morgana (Unlikely Books), and Maths (Chax Press).  Underrated Provinces is just out from MadHat Books.  For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist.  He is an National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow. 

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