I s a b e l B o u t i e t t e —

from Symbol Logic

OOOO

How could the iron, rusted 

shed its own skin more graceful 

more translucent by light with

more tact of surprise or 

churn its rubble wasteland 

for the pretty populace anew 

OOOO

How could there have been beauty 

once like a Symbol promising 

most everything to ruin resolve 

and escape from catacombs 

where Symbol’s pelvis is mounted on  

display in the cold cold room 

Symbol speaks to say ADIEU 

Bless me into trillions of plastic particle airwaves. Angry plastic. Punching holes in lungs and beading the lining of arteries. After eating the casserole of seasons I became garnished with the confidence of stone. Grazed the shore of cities and became a center studded with asterisks. Became lexical. Became telegraphic. Juggled the phantoms of forest or spat out electricity as if drilling in dry metal. Came into language to guide the current of its motion. Every pretty bow on my belt a synapse toward leveling algorithms. Every curve of my midriff a catalyst for desire of masses. 

I mirror: 

bludgeon fine print into  

a powder of decency 

the text always leaned 

on its transformative

power and so it bored me 

glass eggs split open 

and yolk slugs out 

deep purple and rancid 

I’m spelled in pollen

dust on the shoulders 

of trophies and 

picture frames 

OOOO

Fortune’s mist takes over 

the speed of Symbol 

spectator time wrote 

a sentence that sounded

like a squeal 

an epoch could materialize

in a stone or gesture like

Symbol’s voice was a shadow

falling away from its own audience —

or audience picks up Symbol’s 

rubble and molds its facade

against their mob

lounging against grains or soot 

broken mirrors of the broken stage

City/air

Aster, did the sky break? 

Locked in paradise lime-light

hacked melodies gurgling through

the thought of Symbol and 

its vanity, delusions, its egrets 

of guzzled longing that 

could be precious or be held 

in plural gemstone.  Wade

the blistered reefs of the 

orchestral pit to find the 

glare of spotlight 

mistranslated as your glory

     //

Bitter etchings of generational voices

underperforming sap on stage.

On stage: underscoring

underselling undermining

skewing proportions of sound 

cryptomnesia of a different language 

the day goes like this the day goes like this 

the day unctuous the day undressed 

smut lodged in the sky gap 

and Symbol sucking on the wafer of 

unpronounceable atrocity 

whirlpooling in the soot

of the divot before a dam 

//

Suspended, arduous, out on bail or sentenced in absentia

Earth writ in geologic time and now the hustle 

of a feather caught in chicken wire

I swore under the ultimate helmet’s crest

I swear under the infernal clueless plume

I wear under hungry thickets of sargassum

I ware under the prism of eternal longing

When in repetition I becomes a symbol (=) of absentia 

Your tangled marginalia your dirty locks fiddle in the debt of longing

at the end curve of your noisy syllable spit 

into the wishing well — gowns, heists, buttress 

of the swallowed flaming leaden sword 

or a culprit dangling by a finger off the serif cuff 

being a mistress in anybody’s old dream 

the clue was never worth much 

.