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Avram Kline

i am the / livestock he goes, / i am the tongue / he says


asheville

wha, sam davidson?
heck, his family settl
some soldier land

says sister oak, got
lured by indians,
cooked his head

to a cauliflower—
widow go & get &
sit ocher—so they

settl the mouth at bee
tree creek with a sad
girl slave—samuel?

he knew violence,
carried that card
in his vest: i am the

livestock he goes,
i am the tongue
he says, redeem my

land, make me a
cabinin chunscove
wha swannonoa

open some ground
for sam davidson
widow widow end

your moan & come
here for the pork,
i mean we're tackling

onanindian football
field, a plastic pepsi
bottle for a foot

ball, this cultivated
cabbage caboche (head),
boche, like plowing

& expecting, turning
up a girl truffle now
and then a misses

go & get says sister
oak, slap you over
my lap is what i do,

pinch my eyes
what weather is
in cherokee wha

sam? that horseshoe
arm hanging thumb,
he'll come out blue

ridge one day, tooth
bucking, aspic swilling
hot eye lashing, he'll

stalk the misses, settl
the legs of the misses
hereinin indemnify


Avram Kline is an English teacher at New Design High School, a public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He is currently on sabbatical at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he is pursuing an MFA in poetry, and playing washbasin bass for the Cunningham Quartet.