Mouth Pieces 26-30
Mouth enters -- well, hops, really --
into the academy.
Long, lonely -- well, empty,
really -- corridors. Silence in
those hallways. Two ears hear
another silence: of ones who
don’t wish to be found, to be
found out.
The great hall is ornate,
unpeopled, terribly hushed.
Hand holds an unshelved book that
won’t open. One after
another, books that won’t open.
Empty field.
Mouth requests that
hand and leg haul, set up, and
scatter gigantic archery
targets.
Quiver, arrows,
bow.
Even with Mouth’s
instructions, mysterious
lispings, hand and leg have a
hard time: shafts stuck all over
the place, even occasionally
in targets. At the end:
Just leave
those bulls’ eyes. At least, then, others
will know what I was aiming at.
Mouth visits a special zoo and
loves everything, especially
the signs.
“I know that this is
a lion.” “I know that
this is a seal.”
Laugh
and laugh Mouth does.
“Were here: Mouth, mind, ears, eyes, leg,
and hand,” hand scrawls in sand.
The beach is lovely, dunes and waves
running in opposite
directions.
Shouldn’t that be
“Are here?”
Blink.
Blink.
No.
The vanishings arrive later.
Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision, Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail. His full-length collections include matter no matter, from Paper Kite Press, Humors, from Paloma Press, Threnodies, from Moria Books, fata morgana, from Unlikely Books, and Maths, from Chax Press. Underrated Provinces is due out from Mad Hat Press in 2024. For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist. He is an NEH Fellow. Joel recommends supporting locofo chapbooks.
