Heidi Lynn Staples
(née Heidi Peppermint) has poems forthcoming or appearing recently in Aught, The Best American
Poetry 2004, Salt Hill, Skein
, and elsewhere. Her collection Guess Can Gallop (New Issues 2004) was chosen by Brenda
Hillman as a winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. A chapbook-length excerpt of her illustrated memoir, Take Care
Fake Bear Torque Cake
, is forthcoming from 3rd Bed.






Septemijo

....a time. a tumble. autumn as ode to angle tangle.
awesome ya'll the ungreening. warm as sun nostalgia. then as whooosh.
who's shushing? air is to tree as water is to rock....

these pieces of a seized sun hang like a lick's afterthoughts. slicked as the gutters clogged.
these reaches of a sizzled sum. these branches aloft as scission. these are not words of filth.
they're lure make be leaf.

branch]not as in bank branch, bank branch as in river raven. 
yellow]not as in yellow belly, yellow belly as in the golden
stage of understory. oak]as in this. here. tree.

tree≠tree=tree≠tree=
tree≠tree=tree≠tree=tree≠tree=fox's
den is din

attach the storm windows. lit's beginning to glint cold. too a rush
of stirrings. um, geese? no, crow. a blue-black loose on leaves. here worlds
have been mist calm strewn. love true do turn up the thermostat.

i saw spawns skein of outlaw. a caw is back. 
is as small bird. wakes a spiral squall. nada. grackle. awe. a-ha. ha-ha. gall a hallow. hall. to
what hall do you refer? re: fir.

this is. the and. and the big and's sing. this is. about the seizing and
that allows sum's murmur. this is. about null. a bout's all. a bough falls. all is.

is sow. is nit. is to. is knot.







Heresey Rhyme

Bitter brother husband in other room
Wishes she's off,
What she'll she shove him?
Groan grit teeth and mutter.
How she'll she criticize.
Whips out a wife.
How she'll she married him
Wits pout of life.








Aching Common Sense 

                               
for Farah Marklevits 
 


Is a whole in one a golf marriage?
Going the distance. A gopher marriage?

I don't know. An agnostic marriage?
No. An antagonistic marriage?

I wonder, what makes a good marriage?
A not no such thing goose egg marriage?

Stick out your neck. A giraffe marriage?
Pouring out your heart. A carafe marriage?

My mother wed.  A he's gone marriage.
Made of me maid of agon marriage.

Can't believe my eyes.  Agog marriage?
Here's looking at you! A grog marriage?

I've hinged May's aim to Staples. Who's that?
Playing with heart. A gambol marriage?








When the Echophiliac Went Slack to See

She wed so with an inchoate knowledge of the incidental cacophony of hills.

She asked to be called “inchoate”. I said “Ache & Co.”

With the rift of only came other. I spread the extra honey on my feet.

She showed me how to incite heart from electrical silhouettes, sawed thru my darkroom, said
how do you know till you throw it? She’ll cry anything homing device.

She became so undersigned and the motion she mot smote me. Each world a rose in name. 

I could stray up forays. I could enumerate the love meant all over her slip.

The pane of these sheets, want’s one-way.

I am cast in her like a monument of hum.








Reddening Devout of the House

o let's go for our sun say drive,
land wet a honking foil'll gleamingly geese.
you'll thrive on the thrive
wilding an ode. i'll sway to your pleased,
roil down the window to let din the air hive,
the wind singing kin the sheaves.

o hours unsay we're alive;
yet, flare now we're trill flung, full of be leaves –
you sway thru me, derive
mulch perfect there hums. yes, let's conceive
a bay of be. o throes mortis and heat,
true lush here and roaring, we'll cleave

sun to beech copper, arrive
as dei parts, swilling wills of weave.