One Life, Hold the Glamour
by Richard Hacken
Hacken Main Page > Poetry Index > 1980s > One Life, Hold the Glamour
Unconscious on a cot
of fabric and faux feathers
a brown pink charcoal mammal dreams
she isn't bolted in place
but needs to journey
doorways as far
as time can tell.
The geosphere that holds her
cranks a crescent of light
into her day
and she is conscious.
She boils and filters broken beans
and sips the broth slowly.
After pumping liquid fossil fern
into a piston-powered personal transport
welded in Hiroshima
she locates as yesterday
the concrete cube with melted silica light traps
where she inputs
ones and zeros
into a glowing abacus
in order to have the means to stay alive
for tomorrow.
With bones stuck in her mouth forever
she crushes a chunk
of fellow mammal again and again
and lets the sustenance
descend
greased by grapes
gone wrong in 1982.
She reads black letters
off sheets of pulp
left in front of a doorway or on a shelf
and finds herself bolted in place
looking at the evening's ones and zeros.
Releasing mammals and grapes from her body
and remembering to brush her mouth bones
again she again once again
falls
unconscious on a cot
of fabric and faux feathers.
- Richard Hacken
Hacken Main Page > Poetry Index > 1980s > One Life, Hold the Glamour
