FROM THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE (ORDER HERE; TEMPORARILY OUT OF PRINT/LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE)

SEEING VOICE

…It was just then,

The smell of the Kellogg's factory,

Aunt Mavis showing me her dented leg

Where a machine fell,

The glider stuck on the roof

And me out in spring storm, wind

And lightning, smiling with hands stretched in

Air waiting for a gust to boost the glider a little just

More and mine again. You see,

That was a time when air helped me.

And now a puppy too.

I remember.

Yes. Black I think. Skinny.

Something I want to stop re-

membering now. Same time again.

Battle Creek. I nursed it best

I could, feeding it cake,

Trying to make it run with me,

Come on Puppy! Come on Puppy!

Lunges a little, simply happy eyes-

That is the only way to say it;

But the grass is too high, too green.

Puppy stumbles, small, fat, weak, and bloated.

It seemed unfathomable that in the morning-

With the sun like a big orange balloon

That no needle could penetrate,

It would be stiff and cold.

A voice calling for a mother.

My voice:

Come quick, Mom!

Blow on him!

Blow on him! I said,

Get some blankets,

He's cold. Please Mother,

Blow on him.

To see voice is heavens, black and deep,

But with faint glints, tones of red, yellow, and blue.

Giants and Dwarfs.

And there is black within the black hiding

The most boisterous of voices

You can feel pulling at gaze,

A magnet to your looking;

There is a beginning, a thousand at every

Mirror ball light.

Yes, I remember. A method

Actor going deep. Precisely.

I am here with my acting

Coach-blank page and a residential street

Outside ice flowered windows,

A daycare situated on the other side.

He is dead.

There is no air in the vastness of heaven

But may be in the glints,

Or in the black within the black.

This was a time when air did not

Help me see.

THE WONDERFUL THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHEN YOU HURT YOUR FINGER

Soldiers, or should I say sailors, these

little white cell blood boys are. Wandering

around the bars and brothels of the circulatory

system in white dress, but tattooless, bone clean

and courteous, converting the diseased. They even

have families that are neat and clean and wash

before dinner. If any finger

is ever in trouble, like for instance stuck

up a bull's ass, or in the exposed chassis

in the back of a rusty Chevy van,

as was little Amy's when driving back

in an ice storm from Athens, Texas,

the sailors are there to listen deeply.

The least little injury…a little dirt

or the tearing of the fingernail-

and the whole body seems to know at once.

Or there may be the head of the hammer

and an impure thought that passes through before

driving a nail into a cross section

of wood and we miss, of course; and then

the familiar purple throb.

Yes,

we should discuss Amy and the drive.

We had slipped off the road and got stuck.

And she, in her four-year-old boredom, presented

her finger to a hole, slightly smaller.

And my mother, lovingly, amidst

the argument of Amy's parents, Brian

and Faith, spit all over Amy's hand in or-

der to free the tiny digit. And all

the while the little sailors were busy

at work on the inside, pulling wires,

mixing strange concoctions, throwing salt

over their shoulders, and preaching, preaching, and no

one ever paid them much attention, ever,

until sort-of-uncle Shane contracted

Lymphoma years later and then all any-

one had to say was that the white blood cells

were no good. But her body was absolutely

perfect at four. Everything was

in order. You could hear a delightful

droning from her sanguine glow and imagine

a scene full of sequins. You forgot

about time and yearning and infatuation,

Brian bashing the round face of Faith,

blaming her for not keeping him up

when he fell asleep at the wheel.

We hope

that someday nations may be as beautiful

and unselfishly ordered as the human

body

is.

 Chad Faries has published poems, essays, photographs, interviews, and creative non-fiction in Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish, New American Writing, Barrow Street, The Hawaii Review, Afterimage, Post Road, and other magazines and online journals. His collection The Border Will Be Soon was the winner of the Emergency Press open book competition. He is also the author of a memoir, Drive Me Out of My Mind (Emergency Press, 2011). Faries has been a Fulbright Fellow at Etövös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. He is an Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia.

PRAISE FOR CHAD FARIES' THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE

"Through most of these little vignettes I see blow-flies swarming around my cheesecake after copulation." - Gabor Gyukics, Hungarian prophet/madman

"In the easy narrative mess that many poets are now making out of the mystery of their lives, Chad Faries keeps the mystery of his intact, even as he unrolls wicked and breathless stories. I commend him for standing upright by the light of his torch, and not assuming he recognizes everything he sees." - Andrei Codrescu