Alien
____ 

Here we are
in the field of nouns
they like to call
representation

Onions
Bodies
Mushrooms
it’s

tempting
to take
the hieroglyph
at its word
but
the Symbolist
puts it all
inside one thing
you can’t read
good

Maggie refers
to all her
paintings
as aliens
not just the ones
that look like
UFOs

I think
she means it

like a kind of
clunky verb
the image
as encounter

I remember
Július Koller
launched an
ashtray
like a discus
called it
satellite
never made it
into orbit but
someone found it
by the fungi

Alien
____ 

Renata Adler’s
Great Professor
looked down
on the world
and all she saw
was synonyms

I can
relate

I
mean

I
like

to lay
one simple thing
beside another
and to have
the two
commune

Jack Spicer
went to California
took his poems
as dictation
from Martians
wrote a letter to
the ghost of Lorca
“Things don’t connect;
they correspond”

you see
you need that
second alien
it’s the perfect
emblem
for painting
that
big-eyed narcissus
to echo Heaney
just like
the painting
echoes a moment
Maggie had

Crocodile
____ 

The French
love a bouche
it’s funny
Brisset
starts talking pretty
soon his mouth
is full
of teeth
like
when the child
signs ‘crocodile’
those two
little arms
go out
horizontally
in front of
the body
hinging at
the elbow
and

snap 

I’m
reclining
now
feet
up
watching
clouds
drifting
no
watching
Drifting
Clouds
with Maggie
its all about
food and
symbolic debt
and
no one’s
eating till the
bills are paid
but they always
make sure
the dog
gets fed
I guess it
keeps him quiet
and
there’s something
to be said
for silence
is a word
shaped
whole

Shadow
____ 

When the
subtitles
went missing
it made no
sense
one woman
started waving
to the guy
behind the projector
mouthing FAILURE
on the screen
we saw her shadow
writing little words
in the air
with its finger

I thought of
Maggie’s
cuneiform graffiti
scrawled in
wet paint
that sets
like concrete

Benjamin
would call that
gesture
I mean, it’s
gesture whether
Walt says so
or not
(Fuck School!) 
but sometimes
it helps
to give
the thing
its name

—Mitchel Cumming