Michael Basinski

Michael Basinski is the Associate Curator of The Poetry/Rare Books Collection SUNY at Buffalo. He has published more than 25 books of poetry including HEKA, Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor Crashes in Arizona Desert, Beseechers and Heebee-jeebees. These books available via Small Press Distribution. See also:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/basinski/

ORANGE TREES

the immense number of orange-trees

about the burning city,

boiling and bursting,

hatching in fact

is an interesting feature

festering much like

Christ's chest woound,

the one that opened his heart

and it ran blood,

and then it ran water

like one of the great rivers,

the Amazon or the Rio Negro

roaring and broiling throughout

the blazing city, hatching

for Eros in immense numbers

which makes the orange-trees

an orchard of crosses

and renders that delicious fruit

always abundant and cheap

THE VIRGIN FOREST

the sirens of all these trees,

and the climbers of the wind

and the waves around them lap

resembling wild pineapples

described as a goat or calf

or changing into human form

on moon light evenings till eight o'clock

ladies walk about the streets

without headdress and in ballroom attire

with human headed dogs

who occasionally speak water

or in the tongue of trees EeEss

fres brvbees Eves recess receives Iceni Evid

EeEeeEeel eEelves to the herhornedessessessS

er igurine shee laEve er Eever purse

Eear eEe-tooO Eee-tvv EetoVvv eeeeeed seeeed

Sea's wavveEevs ealls in eve's garter gulls

Eeat ear

EeEe Eeverything is not real.

so he followed them immediately

and heard them coversing,

questioning, ring and jetting replies

from some unknown guardings

of the spring, springs

springs in his mattress, his chair,

the broken spring in his car

the broken spring in his head

Michael Basinski