Cleeve Abbey Suite

G. C. Waldrep

REFECTORY

kniving the same

extravagant body

the tongue threshed—

the blunt theft

concealed, a calendar

creased

& lactant, only

a man on a ladder

could feast

on this dry island.

Wheat-ghost,

rise into the tremor.

Wheat-reef

even the bees spared,

what byred here

a tractable

ablution, wisp

of the charred depth

the almoner

turns his back upon,

nude geometry

against which now

a single bench

evitates, correcting

for the body’s

warmth, its delicate

perlustration.

In pelt after pelt

we find the lock

tended,

lapse upon lapse—

GHOST-APSE

maze & bezel

a scaffold

crossed

with a globe

flag sewn into

raw deed’s

oblate garment

it neither

wants nor needs

your muscle

only, not to be

glade

&, dirempt,

the pearl’s

external depth

(roofed

with thirst)

a conic section

ROOF-LINE

scrolled in thirst

& gelded

by our new verticals

the orchard’s

single lash

fleering its dense

Bethlehem

a green syllable

helixed

with the long rind’s

choral blurt—

observed meridian

of the ear’s

doubled rupture

(more datable

in its carbons)

I dreamt

the world-whale

suffered,

that is, to drink

or, straitened,

depth remits its

tined whirr,

its wildest octave

NIGHT STAIR

nothing the star allows

a panicked embroidery

let rise

these spruce pavilions

into which the ships

bear

their creased reserves

the whey combed

into its lambent crèche

nippling w/ bee-gauze

SLYPE

vein of door, a late

ripeness

golds forth

twins itself, a mirror

preconceived, & yet

you risk

the tongue’s crutch

lapsed effigy

of the bleating

master-pain,

its city glows

with almond-hued

flight

can’t you hear

the sun ticking

against the tiles

or, dusk’s

paternal lemniscate

against the heel

of the soft

flocks—

tungsten wives

the shallow bay

& you, moist

tenant, briefly hive