Four Poems by Will Cordeiro

Now must a fire devour our prince         & fare him darkly across

the swan-roads scribbled with the sinking sun
where down & down
your hair is nothing I would see again
the royal flesh               now passing on that flood
the waters roiled, shining      with sheer sky above


as all is outdealt to the in-landers                    hintersaken
I’ll float my gold-dead • my wyrmdoating
wordhoard out
upon a boat that’s slaked with oiled bones & antlers as it enters
into flames
         flam
           am

I shall destroy the language for the sake of love

Parse Extraction

Babytalk can debase
the coins
of language: maybe

every word trembles
in its timbre
like a Cremonese
violin; auto-geometries
tingling

in their extremities.
All ash is wild. A mocking-
bird purrs a radio

ad—our flash-
cards aufbau semi-stable
states of nucleation:
each interlocking crystal’s
nervy prattle. Vectors

resist soft
opens & swerve to cross some rusty
bridge over spleen-dark water

blistering with towers.
Nonpareil, a oneman-band, for
instance. O joint
& rive, how we flex &

quiver. A hand
alone is not the only
hook. Arrow-

less to look beyond
its pointing—
narrowing the sense of
babble, you blurt to
bet the house

on arousing data,
double or
nothing off the books.

Wolf Tones

Listen: this hissing
rain. A static inter-
com; distant trains
that growl & yawn.

I rub my cat’s fur—
electron shudder,
my fingers stirring
against purring ribs.

This cave, an ear;
this sea, the mind—
& if & if, without
a stitch, each entry

point is Minotaur,
then something’s
ever left on hold,
a click—a whine

within a maze:
I lisp—I howl
then fall down
afraid. Who gaa

& grunt, slurpk
& snivel; twine
my own lapsed
snout & gorge.

My flesh has cello’d
like a school of fish:
the last few bubbles
up a champagne flute.

Rotted bloodstream
evening going down,
a spoor gets wobbed
in my dropseed hair.

Imperialism

For hundreds of years, empires depended on sailing vessels transporting vast amounts of gold and plunder… Yet, what happened on the windless days? —Please, my love: a stray hair, a few crumbs, a penny dropped between the cushions! Whatever you give me will suffice.




Will Cordeiro is the author of Trap Street and Whispering Gallery as well as coauthor of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology and, forthcoming, New Foundations of Creative Writing. Will coedits the Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.