Used car. Used car. Used car. A blue used car. A dark bird. The universe howls at me like the hound dog I rescued this week. And I am a child again. Climbing a cherry tree. A maple tree. A dogwood tree. Playing cops and robbers. I affected the knotted loops indirectly. Inadvertently. Almost forgetting the morning coffee was even there. A loaf of bread, the world-wide-web, soteriology. An escape hatch in a film about loss. This week passes me. Irreverently.

This all has to do with words. So, if I could, I would go back to my early twenties. When I refused to read the words of the living. They weren’t from my planet. All those geese, fattened and fluffed. Driving down the road, the left rear tire on my pickup truck explodes. And I feel the black holes, all the other planets. Space. That set me back an hour. The stray hound dog that followed me home. Emaciated. No collar. My afternoon walk. I don’t need to be to know what is. How things fall from this world to that world. How a poem takes shape. How I give these things a home. How a dog evades oncoming traffic. This scene to the next. The stray is asleep in the side yard when I look in the mailbox. There are poems in there. Collectively called mind instructions. And they are from Tracey McTague. With pictures by Elizabeth Zechel. And this makes me happy. Very happy. So I place them on top of Wordsworth in the to-read pile.

by kari edwards

I read it this way; it drops, becomes a list that is not,
advances as a mad dog. the backdrop looks miniature.
someone's eyes fixate on spattering jarred-back removal
of flesh; a remorse code, a separate flow, a location,
cross hairs on dead flowers and a mad dog.

a fierce innocence is deep into paranoia, deep suited
diamonds; burrows into the mind's foothold, a
minefield for later, which I take to be right now.

in a bleak slip, a name names itself. everywhere is color
not seen. just lips, teeth, and mad dogs. I do not know
the first time, maybe pools punctured membranes. the
city ceases to be anything, but hot pockets and festering
sores. there is the usual without addresses, stripped of
probability. all the known and almost known had no
idea. all had lice; the trees had an image problem. there
was a constant hunt or worship for mad dogs or dead
gods.

at that moment, a known beforehand foretold of
pneumatic possibilities. everywhere grated smiles and
triangle behavior. everyone laughed then dies. it is
matter of certainty; everyone is mad. the dog seems
fine.

later was tomorrow, that will be random, this is normal.
someone sends time. cheats on a bargain. settles for a
mock makeover.

"my dear. . ." is how it begins, "we will have to kill
you or the dog, depends on the test; it will take a year
in isolation."

saved by the bell, it is a grab bag. everything all over
is really over, but at that precise moment there is a heavy
clank. a blue swallows the surroundings. pleasure lifts
its head and leaves. the headline will read , "you are
infallible, perfect and you die again." the dog is never
found.

The poet kari edwards is no longer with us. I never met kari in person. Just through email. But kari was on the same page, part of the same community. Part of something that is all too often internalized and not expressed. A shared understanding that takes place in our heads, in our intentions, in the most insignificant of movements. I know I can speak for many poets when I say kari's presence and energy will be missed.

Joking about the abyss may make it more palatable, but it doesn't make it any less abysmal.

I retrieved some large red bud branches from the top of the mountain that were knocked down in an ice storm. I am planing them down, turning them into a home for a poem. I want to look outward if at all possible. To observe what lies beyond the valley and the soil and the stones.