THE RUSTY TOQUE
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JAMES LINDSAY


The Rusty Toque | Issue 12 | Poetry | June 30, 2017

Harmony

​ 
The thing about taking back what was said
is that it’s an impossible contact two parties
agree to understanding it all depends on their
 
mutual will to perform forgetful. Near perfect
but born wounded, lacking technical knowhow.
Runts without a grammar needed to know why
 
these semi-images collage hodgepodge. Nine
times out of ten the most alien organism humans 
can imagine is still humanoid in appearance, still
 
wants to talk. Exists as affirmation. Good dog,
you’ve done your best. Tonight you shall sleep
in the big bed. But once more you must recite
 
the story, and this time without the prompts
provided by the well-intentioned interrogator,
who is impatiently waiting to go home to his
 
small family. A cousin to take care of, a cat
to let in. Not everyone has someone who waits
for them. A collision reconstruction unit drops
 
absorbent dust to seep up leftover liquid
from the car that crashed into the bridge
that bridges the dip in the road that flooded
 
in the winter storm. An agreement between
adults who fail to remember December’s push,
push, push—to what? The right to not be alone.
 
A contract between car and bridge, dust and liquid.
Memory and reality: a molding done in crumbling
Play-Doh; a stunned ring from a dumb bell left on
 
the far side of a Lazy Susan no one uses because
it was never intended to be lived in as an asylum,
only a place to put mutually unthinkable things.

Survivors

 
It would be lying to say that this cold reading will
age well, or that this musician knows how to play
his zither, but the performance sounds convincing
 
so don’t stop the trot and cantor for an affluent few
while their donations spiral into the wishing well,
draining away like the last of the rain water almond
 
farmers prayed for. The droughts caused by breeding
out arsenic from the most widespread milk substitute,
scoffing at the modern crop. Topiary cities reverse
 
engineered from English gardens to public housing
would have been of better use than defending golf
courses from encroaching deserts. Two conclusions
 
are clear: either Los Angeles will return to powder,
or be dragged under the ocean. Time to run through
the survival scenarios again. Time to start dressing
 
as peasants again. It’s suspect to trust a any type of
identification that isn’t self-applied, so forgive the
snickering, it’s just hard to take this seriously after
 
anxious nights pouring over ornate impossibilities
for a physically alive architecture—floral umbilical’s
tethering the Earth to organic space stations; shoots
 
producing their own oxygen; self-repairing elevators
for the survivors to ascend—and it would still be lying
to declare it a solution. Best-case scenario is the shitty
 
wizard conjures drizzle and the director remembers
his name. All are imposters and no one knows anyone
anymore in these days of botched botany. These days
 
of meticulously constructed personas, questionnaires
for gathering information on vegetation some feel deep,
spiritual empathy with. Or at least what is considered
 
spiritual when the messiahs are self-proclaimed and the
survivors, decoding some scraps they were able to save,
seeking meaning in endings, are strangers to each other.
 JAMES LINDSAY is the author of Our Inland Sea, published by Wolsak and Wynn. He is also the owner of Pleasence Records and interviews poets about poetry for Open Book. 
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  • Home
    • Issue 1 >
      • Creative Nonfiction: 1
      • Fiction: 1
      • Screenwriting: 1
      • Poetry: 1
      • Contributors: 1
    • Issue 2 >
      • Visual Art: 2
      • Fiction: 2
      • Poetry: 2
      • Masthead: 2
      • Contributors: 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Poetry: 3
      • Visual Art: 3
      • Comics: 3
      • Fiction: 3
      • Reviews: 3
      • Masthead: 3
      • Contributors: 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Prose: 4
      • Poetry: 4
      • Reviews: 4
      • Visual Art: 4
      • Contributors: 4
      • Masthead: 4
    • Issue 5 >
      • Nonfiction Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark
      • Drama: 5
      • Prose: 5
      • Poetry: 5
      • Film: 5
      • Comics: 5
      • Reviews: 5
      • Visual Art: 5
      • Video & Sound: 5
      • Masthead: 5
      • Contributors: 5
    • Issue 6 >
      • Poetry: 6
      • Prose: 6
      • Reviews: 6
      • Film: 6
      • Visual Art: 6
      • Masthead: 6
      • Contributors: 6
    • Issue 7 >
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      • Poetry: 7
      • Reviews: 7
      • Visual Art: 7
      • Comics: 7
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    • Issue 8 >
      • Poetry: 8
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    • Issue 9 >
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    • Issue 11 >
      • Poetry: 11
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    • Issue 12 >
      • Poetry: 12
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      • Masthead: 12
    • Issue 13 >
      • Poetry: 13
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      • Masthead: 13
  • About
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