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Tape Measure
March 5, 2005    File under: Tapeworm

what is the measure of this line: get out your rulers
folks: three inches, more (depending on font size,
kerning {letter-spacing: 1em} yeah): period defined

by pause of eye or voice, like the Baptist preach-ah
on the radio calling you to witness: involuntary ah
after the water has gone down: alimentary canal

in which food water swallowed air conform like a
tapeworm to intestine walls, tapeworm like a
sentence: to be skinny and long: my grandma

used to mark our height on a wall, worried when
the mark laid on the previous, the sewing tape
tight around the waist the same as month before,

accusing us of eating unwashed fruit, strange
pork, tapewormed, ringwormed, country boys,
those accents sprawling out our mouths, ways

of talking our mother'd long eschewed, fed us
castor oil poke berry tea leaves snuff and
peppers, Force it out she said, ready

with the sewing tape to size the thing when
it curled in toilet or grass, worried too that
the worm would emerge at night from the

throat or nose, close the breathing, wait
in the sheets, be gone, no evidence to stop
these Sunday queries: either you're eating

too much or not enough: this is the question
of measure: what is enough: my doctor tells me
I'm ten pounds over weight, borderline

hypertensive, definitely hyperbolic: no
he doesn't say that though I wish
wondering what I could write on those thin

pads he doesn't use anymore, all computers
now: short poems measured back by edge
or margin, forced to different principle

by occasion situation space made manifest
made soul made organic architecture out-
side and in- reflecting, phrenology phiz-

iognomy ignominy sincerity Jefferson chair
next step: is this the measure of the breath
the swelling of the lung the astronaut blow-test

keep the bubble up, a quotation of some
standard, width of roll of adding tape or thermal
fax I found discarded in the college dump:

give me surplus supplement the poem's ride
against the lane: the inch, having been defined
as the widths of six barleycorns or lengths

of three, the hand of course an average
a nonce (once) no measure niether none, ruler
made from ruler, King's forearm, this poem

at least one Elvis long: what about the rhyme-
period, echo-interval, syllable count between
bad puns: can't we count it off on anything

as in church the canting of psalms, syllables
not explicit made multiple, ready for the twang
of Southern voice on the hymnal's rack: Yeats

running rhyme against the grain, small internals
breaking lines into smaller staple, stitching
line to line, a second poem hiding in the one

you thought you know: great mosaic rhyme
contracting Byzantium's end, smashing
what is past, or passing, or to come

against the holy city's rocks: yz:is ant:past:passing
ti:to um:come, surely the decay or expansion
of the rhyme-spread some kind of measure,

an event you can name can hear can describe:
this tape's more than 16 coaches long: tape
I ride: you could hear it coming, the echo the

yard stick t-bar square: Gary, you can quote me
(echo the): also: ballad meter common but not
common meter till hymned is decayed form of

Anglo-Saxon four-beat line: take Celtic-laden
German language fold in Norman French and whip,
sugar strings stretched, made airy, more taste

they say: no four-beat here: beat more:
double bulk but let rest, the eight beats shrink,
and missinig is memorialized by a tombstone

rhyme: I saw her set the bowl aside, saw the whole
pie made without a cup, the measure in the eye:
it always comes out fine: be glad you saved your

fork: grand maw says eat up ::

Posted by Jake Adam York at March 5, 2005 6:27 PM