Rodney Koeneke

Three poems

The Adorno Corollary

Europe. Memory. Squid Parts. Grace.

Otto of Rose and Lavender

The Adorno Corollary

“I would like to write a poem
that equals
The Snack Bar at Auschwitz”
     — Gloria Frym

latte falls on Auschwitz
in the staterooms, sermons
          are doorjambs

from which the reader learns to open and decode
all the types of symbols

meta-content means
I regulate myself
in the search for sexy subforms
     on the Proust list

“There in the willows we hung our hearts”
     ecriture for the flâneur:

note to self: build tunnels
under sub-meme:

so many hecatombs
   died for the gods

until I learned to improvise
the apricots


Europe. Memory. Squid Parts. Grace.

Whether the squid’s ear resembles the diaphanous soul in ascent
or an aerial shot of Cuba
the macabre happens and happens

Rising like a prayer for my daughter, Svetlana
remarkable for the grace with which she moved through the insipid
stations of her teens

Educing the woman out of the girl
like scampi brought upriver by cruise ships
and served at the noisy quinceañeras of East Los Angeles

Kind of detached from reality as evening flickers
and blogs by American males rhizomically expand in the blogspace
and Zeus hauls memory’s daughter across the ocean

To an island of prosperous rental property owners
busy remembering Cuba
where Internet cafes are like churches

and churches are like monsters
once believed in and dreaded across pre-Christian Europe
now placed wistfully inside the atriums of the forgotten

as equivocal as fog, as curtains, as darkness, as closed doors


Otto of Rose and Lavender

for Michael Magee

Little lavender sachets, great to place in dresser drawers
or in your auto, exist in 5 patterns: rose petal, amaranth, slippery
elm, coconut, assam. We have two models of diffusers (Auto Scent Plug-In
Diffuser — Plug into cigarette lighter — & Liquid Arcana Diffuser of Essence)

We are THE marketing organization in the field of auto lubrication
& we make soothing and fragrant lavender products for your skin or home
sweet, deep, long-lasting
rose bags shipped worldwide in lavender sachets.

Our bags have several uses:
The Auto Club float (decorated entirely by Auto
Club members); carnation smoke that trails the plane; Kaffir lilies
with oblong tongues. One of our products partners

With each of these conditions. Consumers forget, then rise up
from the convenience stores and auto shops, hungry
for fresh blessings from our Liquid Enhancer/ Diffuser.
We give them gum benzoin

then they sleep and forget again. We give out
free suites of security ingredients: Goldenseal Root
& Auto Exhaust, attar of Rose hips & Lavender oil,
deep-tissue massage, auto-immune dysfunction

and these drip pads for their oily constitutions.