Valve, by William Repass

Valve 
after Fernand Léger 
​
Plumb the undergirding : underbelly : make known a thing or two : to know full well the heave and the swell, foam tip body of all waters, and make it, give it flow : to put form forth, make round : chute : pump fluid through : the forms of meat, of metal, the full rounded forms, the squelch and the sheen : infused : long hollows of piping, pipelines, elbowed to return the waters : beneath tubs, gleamy, filled at the turn of a whim in a gush from the stem of faucet : piping hot water to sluice the trunk, button bellied frame sucking a pipe : drinking in a print on the wall beside the fogged mirror : a painting a tunnel of squeezed paint, canal of colour : four cyclists, their bicycle pipe and rubber : outlined bold as font : how the bell on a bar is the bell at the tip of the stem of a flower, gripped by the hand like a beer heady with foam from the tap : such a perplexity of plumbing, fit together, fused underneath : how to paint slang and windpipe, vent fumes : and to weld from all of it a fuselage, a fountain : the tuba undergirding a swell in the tear ducts. Fernand, two or three tubes stay plugged. All tubes two-way : swollen and fit to burst.

William Repass

William Repass lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Small Po[r]tions, Threadcount, and elsewhere. His critical writings can be found at Full Stop, Colorado Review, and Flock.