Water

MIKE MEMMESHEIMER

Water
A Lorine Niedecker cento

(117) O let me rise to the door-knob
(217) This morning
(132) This is my mother’s birthday.
(79) As a young woman
(170) the little white slave-girl
(257) dived to concrete
(278) by a two-month migraine
(273) and I was born –
(220) A student
(166) and then her life was sand

(117) O rock my baby on the tree tops
(206) Grasses’ dry membranous
(286) The soil is poor
(217) from sun burning
(133) what do you know
(125) Reason explodes. Atomic split
(279) or not at all

(256) Great God –
(257) It rained
(239) A man
(221) so good as human
(207) Some float off on chocolate bars
(171) where my mother was
(170) birds and frogs
(184) will return

(158) Sorrow moves in wide waves,
(174) after storm shall we speak of love?

(171) I am lame and dizzy but eat
(154) mincemeat with meat,
(257) Pigeons
(134) birds flying through leaves
(125) movement, rest, repeat
(112) to Shakespeare who never ceased.

(261) My mother and I
(283) rode the sea
(227) wave ride.
(289) My mother
(133) who couldn’t bake
(121) we’ve got too much, just keep out the weeds
(103) miracles of profit
(138) as my mother,
(261) who bore the weights of lake water
(166) She’ll sue for divorce


(226) the soul: in the blood Retired
(218) Truth
(167) Throw it over –
(165) for our work, lay down at night without hay
(116) Look, the woods, the sky, our home.

(170) I rose from marsh mud
(105) Frosts, fires, land speculation, comet.
(251) the better to eat you
(265) for a wing-bone
(287) worth sticking to
(98) and painted in red, a bluebottle gentian

(119) Sleep and it won’t matter.
(355) I’ll go ahead on the horse. You can follow me in the wagon.
(201) I’ve been free