[Rochelle
Owens has been working over the last several decades on a corpus of poems in-series,
while her later work, however refined, has maintained the unique power &
pitch ascribed to her earlier poetry by Marjorie Perloff, among others; ‘Rochelle Owens’ writing ... is sui generis. She is, in many
ways, a proto-language poet, her marked ellipses, syntactic oddities, and dense
and clashing verbal surfaces recalling the long poems of Bruce Andrews and Ron
Silliman. But Owens is angrier, more energetic, and more assertive than most of
her Language counterparts, male and female, and she presents herself as
curiously non-introspective.” Part One
of Beloved the Aardvark can be found here on Poems and Poetics. (J.R.)]
Next
to a wall
of
concrete stands a man
covered
with tattoos
orange yellow
green
astrological
signs etched into
his
skin
tendons
and nerves
drink
color his hand balled
into
a fist
a
fringe of drool
and
blood circles the mouth
his
lips move
a
secret tribal language
then
he counts
the
months in a year his thumb
and
forefinger moving
back
and forth along a wall
‘who
eat up my people as they
eat
bread’
*
Morning
to evening
evening
to morning audible
inaudible
the
rhythm the rhythm
of
spontaneous changes sunlight/
blackness
blinking
in and out
piles
of sand appear
disappear audible
inaudible
the
sound of digging
digging
deeper
precise methodical
searching
always
the Aardvark
moves
in circles moves in circles
in
the here and now
swaying
side to side
piles
of sand appear
disappear work is a binding
obligation
suffer
the Aardvark children
*
Out
of an ant hill
a
waft of air lovely the ant hill
curved
like an embrace
*
Rays
of sunlight
penetrate
the roof of your skull
warming your back
warming
your hands
and
fingers holding a piece
of
charcoal
drawing
zigzags of
black
lines tendons nerves
ligament
spirals
of veins pulsate
blood
in blood out
*
On
a concrete wall
lit
up by fluorescent light
vibrating
particles
shape
the contours of an animal
the
face of the Aardvark
is
its parts the eyes nose
and
mouth
the
cylindrical tongue
the
long ears
heating
to the temperature
of
human skin
*
Pale
and red
the
mouth of a child eating
an
apple
a
montage of bite marks
your
hand balled into a fist
*
Press
button to hear
morning
to evening evening
to
morning
a s o u n d s c a p e
of
everlasting duration
evening
to morning morning
to
evening
out
of the digital age
a
course of events
the
scientific explosive realm
across
the
twenty-first century
*
Press
button
to
hear a musical interval
in
the afternoon
sipping
Umbrian wine
tearing
off the wing
of
a roast pigeon a musical
montage
evoking
the rhythm
the
rhythm of spontaneous changes
Louis
Armstrong’s
“Black
and Blue”
a
Bach cantata Native American flutes
Buddhist
chants singing dolphins
Willie
Nelson’s “On the Road Again”
*
You
turn in
the
direction of a voice
spelling
out a word
A
m f a t t e h r
a
voice repeating
an
unknown word motionless
the
Aardvark
stands
listening
a
voice repeating spelling
out
a word
A
m f a t t e h r
made
of the letters
of
a noun drawing zigzags
of
black lines
horizontal/vertical
a
piece of charcoal
held
with fingers and thumb
body
of data
data
of body
an
animal from Africa
a
member
of
the mammalian order
*
Mounds
of sand
appear disappear
massive
the
claws digging
searching
long
ago an hour ago
only
a minute
the
universe contracts e x p a n d s
disease famine
torture war
rhythmic
a flow
of
hormonal forces blood in
blood
out
disease famine
torture war
the
Aardvark
comes
out in daylight to lie
in
the sun
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