Washed Muscular Vision
High antic living room
tensile currents make blobs
sharp dances
within my breathing wall
machine unbuttoned into poor grams–
these tweaking gears
figurined on the edge
of kilned steel–
High red heat keeps breathing
the carpet smells
Here, i am the lifting lilac—
where are daydreams well-painted.
held by firm fingers,
cracked shrubs
peonies of the living room
yell of pungent stains on the white carpet—
bleached and bleached
to feel the light burst on the head
our little corners of the house
muscle fiber vacuum
memorized movements
devoted to pristine pulses
cleaned to terse pieces
––a crazed geometry––
a massive voice
tumbles in a kitchen dance
this difficult lightning
a moving metal livewire–
i let loose a musculating fire
and by the button, a pristine metal
forms an ingot––devoted
the lucid glass eye
no material for the house–
Kinetic Lawn
inaudible morning–
my brutal old vision
soft grass combed
flat in late June.
a chance
of residual rain–
one day the house
is set ablaze and
undetected broadcasts
minted cancerous a decade later–
there is a moment to fall unconscious,
to wake up where there is no furniture left–
from the plunged fire,
half-burnt–
kept asleep,
soiled by mud
and prickles.
to dust the kitchen of corrosive hours
fresh tiles peeled beneath them, a mosaic
of lesions.
but the lawn
in pristine condition,
a wilted bone of a loud house
symmetrically refining
loose materials
sifting through decorative furniture
the fake lawns
in the thick tunes,
a metallic odor is formed
by rusted pipes.
Racket Movement, In Silence
Like toxins to the city
the reaper, brutish, circles under a steel sun–
i raid cabinetry for painted plates
cut inaccurate flood paintings,
a mechanic to piece it all together–
placed above the racket,
a chorus of splattered
conversations
latticed behind a screen door–
i exit the streets––
listen to scalding riddles
the sun is melted down sand
and under the steel fire
i collect a routine loop
jokes, inclined
malodor–– the molecular shard
seared into cement
i have lived this morning before
an interstice of softer shards
stone vein
my body
harder to move
chiseling
a glass mechanic
fragiled by fake games
Or swarmed by the bustle.
-
Maxwell Rabb is the author of the chapbook Faster, the Whirl Wheel (Greying Ghost, Forthcoming 2023). He lives in New York City, leaving his heart in New Orleans and Atlanta. His poems have appeared in the Action Books Blog, Tagvverk, Mercury Firs, and Apogee, among others. He completed his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He co-edits GROTTO.