Two Poems by Sylvia Geist

After Canetti

All the evening long, water-buffaloes went back to the rhinos, birds
to lizards, furry animals to the animals without hair,
and so it went- away into the incredibility of the language of bones.
A Production of the BBC led us forth, whisking the transformation of
the world into images; each seemingly interchangeable
in that it became wingéd or burrowed in, grew matted, grew
claws, hands, a carneval of interpretations

of something that had only now got discovered because it was necessary.
The whole thing seemed like an advertisement to me or
a training program. Neither giving solace. So much has taken place,
takes place out of sheer need. What does it help to know you were once
something else, with no explanation, which allows space for
better innovations, imitations even, that are nevertheless
changed into more clandestine cells, upon which small flaming

tongues give warmth as would a tiny piece of ice. Nothing seems to
refute the possibility that change is the response of the powerless,
taking into consideration such affinities, a place of refuge,
without which nothing would remain, no form water could
still assume, none that it could make hollow for something
else, and the stinger of the bee, the tooth of the dog, their
compulsory, gloomy forgiveness.

Garnering

Birds are nesting in the books.
Samples of the moon across the way,

leaves from Ariel's tree, divided in fours,
an attempt at a nest:

Cataloguing losses. I withold
nourishment from them, water, open windows,

am still unable to stand in mid-air.
Not to say what their coverts are made of.

One time I find a bell of straw
rolling out an egg, incessantly, white.

It must be that way inside
a mouth, before I open it.

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