shadow splits and divides on either side
of a pelvic blade. Unity in strict notation.
Dear ghost. Dear reader. I have seen you.
And this at least is one definition, I include,
to become, who I call, myself. A remembrance
got on autumn footpath scurrying on our way
to life. So now when I line up and belong
to persons next to me, I’ll be good
and eat my soup. But I’m sick.
It’s getting harder to say now, this
exploded present, doubling back moebius
style on your gaze and the air thick
thick with tongues. You’ll say it’s too discursive.
But I have learned more from chicken soup
than all the bright contests. So praise
the retarded man serving me coffee
at the meeting, he has a place. Bless him.
And you think I’m kidding.
What did you do today for someone? Or rather
what have I done to sit here. Call me Dismal.
I wake up a thousand times a day. And ask
three questions. Are you shy are you lost
are you blue? Is there nothing left for you?
Only on holiday or for one holiday only?
From boneyard to schoolyard. All the good
it does you now. Waiting in a parking lot.
O pioneer your keel has run aground,
your stars have betrayed you.
There is no instruction for this light,
no room bigger than a lung. Who can say
in common speech what the crowds were cheering for.
Rushing in at the edges of the map
lamenting the end of the forest. Open the theater,
place the ring inside. A curtain of birds
and fish. A curtain of trees and hills
and vistas. Now bring about words to heal.
Sentences to bring about change. Grammar
that shall inhibit evil? Now: clap hands.
Father tell me what you think
of me. Is it a face or a factory? Come here
to distinguish the burden of a smile. Attached
to lightning. As the world was revealed then returned
to your sandwich. I am who sent me.
Obvious and otherwise a trope was. This laundry
line strung from year to year reaches
to the woman I am becoming. Always leads to my fear.
The difficulties of ambiguity. Or your smile
chosen. A vehicle that allows no passage beyond,
but the surface is bright. You’re wrong about clarity,
blue inescapable blue. Not a red sky at night.
What delight can I afford? Though
this might be leading nowhere. This is
a composite map leading me to the horizon
of afternoon, where the you is not erased
or blown away but remains coal ash intact
at the bottom of my mouth. A music
to enhance our margin plotting to broaden
this plain. My field of reference larger than.
To unfold stillness, and giving time time,
I learned to trust the history of my own backyard.
To this day I don’t read newspapers.
After all the sun we had. At twilight a salamander
will appear in the core of the reactor.
The day I gave my wedding dress away.
FROM
ARTIFICIAL HEART
NEW PICNIC TIME
Unless the giddy heaven fall —ANDREW MARVELL
1.
Out of this close horizon there are animals
breathing unlike a child’s drawing of a nativity.
Orbiting circles with brown x’s. Farther off
pedestrians make parallel lines and collapse
into distance. Or becoming one of several skylines
in charcoal or finger-paint.
2.
At zero hour an earth unwrites itself.
Becomes an indelible number line
counting backward to embrace its new horizon,
indefatigable zero. The high lit window.
A person tethered to a desk. This city and its outline
its rivers, its cemeteries.
3.
Invisible, the orchard keeper’s mansion
is everywhere. The heart becomes one, last stone
of an existing grove and a squatter’s earth.
Thus in persons and in plants also stone.
And the brilliant element of fire and to the helix
and throughout the electrics: salt.
4.
Beyond this image decomposing: desire. And as always
with the mouth there is earth. Because it calls, fear is redundant.
And that animal sound in late night is only its own. Speech
becoming one, becoming air, books outlasting buildings
outlast sweat and the broken human form a body labors.
Whose face is the same as another?
5.
Nothing spoke for itself. Every action implied a rhetoric
so it may recognize itself. To teach, to celebrate virtue,
to persuade by example, to lead the court to its ideal self
through wonder. Same page same fable trajectory. A window.
The young father dreaming. A hand a face a feeling.
It was a sound he heard.
6.
The way of earthworms and coffins of dead infants,
cobwebs and deformity, of windows and the children