NOSERING CELLPHONE by LANNY QUARLES

JEFF HARRISON reviews

NOSERING CELLPHONE by Lanny Quarles
(Lulu, 2008)

Lanny Quarles' blog: http://phaneron.blogspot.com

Queen Minotaur,
your hoof-textings, banalitease all,
are as frankenscience murmyrrhing, I'll confess,
but am I Nero Wolfe to tend your orchids?

Orchids, none I'll have, but Jose Wales poppies!
(And Laurel Hardy?
What of unending wayward cedars?
O, desist, abandon your wiles,
Queen Minotaur!)

Monocles dance
at the spectacle of my luggage
adorned
with JFK head portrait stickers.
The monocles
adorn
sexy amoebas
with white-haired cell-phones.
Are
they not distracted
by my suit of compressed coffee grounds
borrowed from Felix Feneon?
My muttonchops?
My cute ideas?

If "earth is now called / simply / 'aztec-style ear-canal'", then the urine of a virgin floats above geometric forms.

If "the genesis of / unending wayward cedars / is captured perfectly", then angels, in the night, commit to the werewolf's care a bronze cup.

If "a mexican-style nosering BMW / looks on / through macaroni / eyebreasts", then Theatre drowns itself with machines.

If "i cannot help / but imagine her / as a terracotta cellphone", then the earthworm is dead of shadow.

If "the language is / 'gladiola ape bar'", then even the subconscious is not patient enough for theatre.

If "your freckles / were my money / in a submarine", then Theatre, like badger, pinetree, broken water, goes.

If "my ideas / aren't cute / like cellphones", then I hate Mr. Nero.

If "today i am in phoenix", then forms float above the urine of a virgin.

The Hardy Boys
have infiltrated
my Scottsdale resort hotel
stealthy as silent fins
of fin de siècle,
not trusting the aural camouflage
of quadrille and sphinx's coloratura.
(I will not mention ring tones!)
They are here for your orchids,
Queen Minotaur.
Thus consider me a dream!
Not so much a passing fancy,
as the chance encounter of a monocle
and a scintillation of daylight.

*****

Jeff Harrison reviewed books for the past four issues of Galatea Resurrects: http://galatearesurrection11.blogspot.com/2008/12/walden-book-by-allen-bramhall.html Some of his poems can be read here and here. You are welcome to visit Antic View.