Three Poems by Paul Legault

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Pic

Your mouth is putting me on
like a flower
that fits.

EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY: You are very quickly.
FOREST MUSHROOM: I am its beauty.
FOREST: I am it
with the whitensses of the mushrooms.
PACIFIC GARDENS: What was one thing

was moonesque.
What was wet ran

that way with the demon-gardener.
A SMOKE: I am the devotion of smoke.

HER: I’m the beauty of her beauty.
LIGHT: When I go somewhere

with my one eye
I don’t go somewhere else.

War Marvels

All of my Bernieces have turned into gods.
Light it up, Bernieces.
Miscarry this fineness,
like the million flares I wanted to exist.

THE FLARES THAT DO EXIST: We’re a tease.
EARTH: Eat me.
EARTH: I will if you do,
with my big mouth.
BALTHAZAR: I would have said the sky should eat

at this cannibal feast too,
but its diet

is comprised of souls and disco.
FLAME: Guillaume,
it is you who approached me in the centuries.

GUILLAUME: Let me tell you about it.
THE STORY OF GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE: A woman inside of a cannon
inside of a horse

got inside of Guillaume
inside of Guillaume inside of
what the future shall know.

The Smokes

And during that war is,
the earth goes ahead
getting gussied up.

FUME: Hup to, olfactory system.
BLACK FOG: The color tastes like the color.
FLOWERS: (a little light in the loafers) Can I have something?
THE ZONE: I mind

the way you can in me,
but yes, the way your hand can move

things that aren’t hair as if they were hair.
GRAVITY: I can do it where blue smokes.

OVERSEXED GOD: And where things soften up.
PAPER WITCH: I put fire,

I don’t know, wherever,
and it better stay put.

Paul Legault’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Maggy, SUPERMACHINE and other journals. He is the author of two books of poetry, The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn, 2010) and The Other Poems, which is forthcoming this fall from Fence Books. He co-edits the translation press Telephone Books and works at the Academy of American Poets.

For more poetry, visit The Poetry Section’s vast archive. You may contact the editor at [email protected].