Postcards, the Attic Cabinet by Sam Rasnake

To Duchamp There are no tapestries here, no weaving, no nights spent undoing empires worth saving We are glass & tubes & gears that grind the wheels that turn under a metal veil streaming as if a single life – forgotten or remembered – could be forged in a blast of sand and steel – New York, 1913 Amsterdam Ssshhh – Don’t tell anyone. I’m outside the hotel room where Chet Baker died. What made him think he could fly? I bribed the bellboy to let me in to see the window. My fingers against the cool glass – the city, a cluster of lights waiting for dawn, and suddenly I feel wings – I swear – opening from both my shoulders. See you soon. Maybe – – 1994 To Buson One crow walks the roof of a blue Mustang, speaks to the sky, to nothing, speaks to hear his own voice when it falls against gravel – Surely this winter, from its wild and lonely places, will cover the hard world in a breath, a shadow, in a moving on the wind. He must know something, then hops down, disappears – – 2006 Berlin – for Edmund Kohler The dust is everything. All times between living and the dead blur to nothing, to one foot in front of the other, to a slice of raw potato, and water that hints at tea. You should see this place. Dark hallways with wrecked doors, empty stairwells where music is silence. A broken city – Piles of rubble here and here and here. So many. – 1947

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