Steven Manuel
I.
some little something sweet to crawl asleep besiiiide you
Abyss’s yesses
The Middle Voice
II.
glimmer as in dream or sfalma bagworms
as nerves emerge
from the arbor vitae
a wiggly pulsing
thrive and thrust
cocoons
masked as conifers
slip in thy hedges
spiders crawl by
hungry
dragonflies
deft in the sun
sit atop
tower-thin, unlit
Christmas
light
lines
Again,
‘a strengthening
arcana…’
III.
Le Tremblement de terre, ‘as in ark & veil’,
‘I have said seem, but am persuaded that distance is nothing
but a phantasy. We are often sitting by our cottage fire,
and often we think we hear your voice
calling at the gate.
Surely these things are real and eternal in our eternal mind
and can never pass away.
My wife continues well, thanks to Mr. Birch's Electrical Magic…’
IV.
The Whore of Babel is a Peacock [Boehme, 40 Qs, 1.259, sie pranget]
enters by the side-door.
Put the feathers in blue-white white and blue china [G. Rossetti’s peacock]
after the deer has stamped them off.
(real-gold-covered shutters
snaked with peacocks)
Feathers can still be seen
on early Christian sarcophagi
in the catacombs of Rome.
Transformation, Sight, Adultery.
Whistler’s Peacock Room and Whitman’s
Resurrection of the Wheat: the eating of waste
to heal oneself.
Symbol of transformation,
whole lot of women, mama, out in red on the streets today
The final alembic, the enchanted loom,
Insunken central death
‘As if Rumpelstiltskin himself had gone wild one night with the spinning wheel’
“I am also reminded, thinking again of Orson Welles’ films, of the large, monstrous Quinlan in
Touch of Evil, who ends his life floating down a river, a sort of reversed or perverted Orphaic
death--his whole bloated body floating down, not simply the singing head--and his body does
not sing, and sound is mutated by the wires and recordings, tapes, etc. And the only nymph or
muse nearby to receive him--actually he is floating away from her--is Marlene Dietrich, now an
old gypsy tarot card reader in Mexico, who knew Quinlan for what seems like a very long time,
saying, He was some kind of a man; what does it matter / what you say about people? in her
perfect articulations, unsayable right but by her.”
Steven Manuel lives in Providence, RI, where he’s just completed a PhD in Comparative Literature at Brown. He is at work revising his dissertation—a critical edition of Ronald Johnson’s ARK: The Foundations—for publication. His first book of poetry, The Fire, was published in 2023.