The Salon and ants swarming on leaves

One in the Marma-
lade jar. One looped
through a larger ring.
Metal brackets holding
it to a wooden board
bored to the wall,
stapled to a wall.

Along the table's edge
a long china dinner set
broad platters, sheaths
of transparent vinyl.
The disk jockey creeps along the salon
dropping breadcrumbs

he records turning in the corner
he lurches down the buffet line in jointed heels
left leg buckles right leg buckles

left placeholders
for oneself. Poisoned ones
bathe oneself.
English doesn't do things to itself
like other languages
like people do to themselves.

Is language distancing the felt curtains from the central chamber?
Has there been a hidden mechanism?
Concrete flooring ribbed, ribbing,
a general rolling and muttering of the ground plane.

Eight hundred years, rigor
metastasized at the pump.
Scooped out waiting
with a terrible disease
and scales on the chin.

One thing hung inside another thing.
Suspended from the first thing but touching no thing.
Beatles crawling on bark,

Masked and hairy or paltry and sad
it depends on how fast one can boil or shove
but what could one possibly want to do
that takes longer?