print previewback JAMES HENRY KNIPPEN
Bedroom (In the Ear)
1
transient forest beyond
drums rollingwindows quivering
hold a history
the other side their dark glistening
a forest listening to beyond
and inward
( fallen from suncrisp sapling
leaflets filled
an old stone well
where buried . . .
as the oftensong
an elusive child
rings
through the walls of snail shellsruns
through furrows that run up each trunk
( when a tree falls in the forest . . .
and her white dress
vanished behind a tree
and the tree fell
and she wasn’t there
2
a deaf man used to hunt such children
with his trumpet
stalk the stalks with blazing
( creekbed
monkshood praying for a flood . . .
in wake of a bark from its brass mouth
and lasted the moments he sought her
one song then another
( o the seedless timber scream
like injured rabbits . . .
until there was no one
left to singbut one last girlhidden in limbs
of one last tree
so he played a berceuse in cerulean
until its roots burst into flameand as the raucous
corvids flew away to pass away
( what birds above
the sound
a hundred rusted hinges
holding
garden gates the ghosts
unlatched
that open in the wind . . .
the girl with the voice of a vibraphone
and the trumpet
never played again
3
but even the silence of a room
filled with oscillating fanviolin passing through
its walls
feels like aftertaste
but does not fade
as trees scratch the windows
at one the other
listens to the inner workings of a pillow
a valleyful of children screaming
as if from deep within the ground
a distance its screams are a whisper
goodnight
but clear as the billowing of trees
( goodnight . . . 
