The Brooklyn Rail

Ape Ancestry

With a flush
and a rush of

nocturnal swirl,



apes gape though

planetary plexi,



in deity’s study



where zoolunar

logic tells me

of my ancestry.



Ancestry!

in the

beady beans

in the

twinkle wrinkle



Ancestry!

in the moony

monkey skin,



in the starry

expression.

My Refinery

Bridge in flames


torch in hand



all my friends stand

across



and with this hook

of lost look



I roil with

mutation



in sea-space surround



a cycloptic mound

of horrific headiness



a refinery of

oily introspection,



inflamed,



and still in

operation.

Jeremy Sigler’s Crackpot Poet is forthcoming from Black Square Editions. His two other books of poetry, Mallet Eyes and To and To, were both published by Left Hand Books, a press founded by the late Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. He is the Assistant New York Editor of Parkett, and teaches in the art departments at the Maryland Institute College of Art and, intermittently, Yale University. Sigler was recently awarded a Lannan Foundation writer’s residency in Marfa, Texas, which he will attend in May.