b r i a n    s t r a n g

sonorium

without eyes names without

humans within microphones

stationed for radial emission



winners race to their graves

loud speakers stalactite teeth

announce abrasive agendas



new theories of flight foretell

the limit limbic senses liminal

systems of sets in the marrow



where dual suns of eye and I

bloom and bloat come together

come undone enter the constant



solemn heads bowed toward

the breeze listen to the sonic the

sainted and saline to the sound



of the absence of sound that

clutches as it crows baseless

and uncontrollable treason



that cracks their self same soup

rains crimson heat on reason

inhabitants gather the weakest



in a red forest down pressed

folded into earth fissures

they emerge wanting means



static machines gorge on zeroes

fold the forms into lines sort

the troubled from the troubled



so where does this get off? where

do they go whose eyes (as I) are filled

with a fabric of flaws and phenomena?



overhead pop songs bloom

in the roar of afternoon

over who are found wanting



found waiting in lines queued

round Sylvian fissures speech

shuffles toward touch of others



toward the only return to what

busts through the order cannot

be packed back into its own shell





* “Pop songs bloom in the roar of afternoon.” — Julie Carr

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BRIAN STRANG, co-editor of 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, lives in Oakland and teaches English composition at San Francisco State University and Merritt College. He is the author of Incretion (Spuyten Duyvil) and machinations (a free Duration ebook) and several chapbooks, including recently "Human-Sized" and "Inhabitants," a chapbook of poem/drawings, from Peter Ganick's small-chapbook-project. Recent poem/paintings can be seen at his website, Sorry Nature and at Deep Oakland and in January 2009 Canessa Gallery featured his second solo art exhibit. His poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared in many journals including New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Denver Quarterly and Ur-Vox. Recently, his work appeared in translation in the Portuguese journal DiVersos.

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