Johnathan VanBallenberghe /  Tracks for Geckos


TRACKS FOR GECKOS, FOR GASPS OF THE TICK and the succulent fly’s
leg fed on in dimness, a window.

Plurality…Take someone, him on a beach, detailed by our beliefs: There,
Him! Yes, for whom the reef-spray off cliff-rub is an inhalant. Easily – he
could be seen as one certain thing. As if he never selects thoughts nor drops
moods from pinchers, loads hunches on a rack, snips some from a main
composition. As if he never uses widest sources, like

                    So-shu churned in the sea.
                    Seal sports in the spray-whited circles of
                            cliff wash,
                    Sleek head, daughter of Lir,
                                    eyes of Picasso

Plurality…The procedure of his wrists turning hands to finger an itch from
tick breath, his outlines, havoc, color kenneling in his space. His space? You
felt your arm while imagining him feeling his.

Happenings coexisting…them and their members, the asthmatic insect, the
hobble-lizard, or someone’s hair being prurient and seen through a window.
And this experience soon will be distant at least one remove, too, what just
happened now a black line on a background that is pink.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Winter 2004, Volume I, Issue I