"Hardwired into the Cogwork" and another poem by Marc Vincenz

"all those shadows, edges, arches, / anything emerging from / time and soot everywhere."

Lava fields in Iceland

Hardwired into the Cogwork

There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws
that takes that benefit, and draws him
whither the benefactor will.

Johnny Donne, from Sermon LII,
Preached Upon the Penitential Psalms

I. Rules of Scripture

A foregone conclusion?
Dead benefactor, you say? 
Be aware, be sharp-eyed. 

If you were following 
all the rules of scripture, 
by now we’d all be dead. 

II. One Sun Seen in Another

Down in the pastures, 
those having never seen 
the light, the dust-eaters, 

earth-tumblers, pressed 
upon the mouth 
of the cold glare: 

all those shadows, edges, arches, 
anything emerging from 
time and soot everywhere. 

III. Into the Wormhole

Watch the leaf in the sun 
with your name on it tremble, 
watch it spin, watch it 

follow the journeys 
of the day birds and 
the night birds, hidden 

in the deepest recesses 
of the cell; watch 
the quiet pendulum return.

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An Uneasy Icelandic Grit

Drink ale by the fire, but slide on the ice; buy a steed when ’tis lanky, a sword when ’tis rusty; feed thy horse neath a
roof, and thy hound in the yard.

The Poetic Edda, Hávamál,
“Maxims for All Men” (trans. Olive Bray)

Perhaps the sleepless dreamer will hear
her own voice this Reykjavík summer, 

the octaves quavering over their own timbre,
deep from within Middle Earth, 

with those eyes, her own fanciful features 
marking measures in the darkness;

that some enchanted creature might,
one night in the Odadahraun, 

in those ancient cities of ash and wind,
climb those walls of ice, a weathered wonder,

with only a basket of seaweed and lichen
to bless the gods of frost and snow.

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Marc Vincenz is a multi-lingual poet, fiction writer, journalist, translator, editor, musician and artist. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His recent poetry collections, include, A Brief Conversation with Consciousness, The Little Book of Earthly Delights, There Might Be a Moon or a Dog, 39 Wonders and Other Management Issues, The Pearl Diver of Irunmani, A Splash of Cave Paint, The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars, Thieves’ Canto, The Mayfly Codex, and forthcoming in 2026 with White Pine Press, No More Animal Poems. An post-classical / ambient / word music album based on the same book, featuring spoken word poetry, music and soundscapes, and produced by Grammy-Award winning producer, Peter Katis, will be released simultaneously. Marc’s translation of award-winning Swiss poet and novelist, Klaus Merz’ selected poems, An Audible Blue, won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Award for Translated Literature. He translates from the German, Romanian, French and Spanish. He is publisher and editor of MadHat Press and publisher of the essential journal New American Writing, and lives on a farm in Western Massachusetts where there are more spiny-nosed voles, tufted grey-buckle hares and Amoeba scintilla than humans.

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So Far This Month from The Fortnightly Review: