Extra Hidden Life, among the Days. Brenda Hillman

bold—

[Untitled Day]

      In the dream, they were doing better,

      i could see that. He had

      bought a suit; they could

      laugh together (though not always

      at the same things);

      & where they sat—

      a glow (from

      the window ledge,

      lined with small

      recent jars, in fringe-training—)

      brought in the common day—

      filled not with wisdom

      but with insights & their variants—;

      when you send in your request

      you have to know what

      you are working with …

      i said to the dream, take

      this ordeal … (what’s good

      for the night is never

      a belief …—) The room

      was the gold of five

      days in summer

      though the chairs were made of wood

      from the forest of grief—

Species Prepare to Exist after Money

      Turns out bacteria communicate in color.

      They warn each other in teal

      or celadon & humans assign

      meaning to this, saying they are distressed

      or full of longing. The wood rat

      makes a nest of H’s; it hoards

      the seven tiny silences. Crows in the pine

      can count specific faces like writers

      who feel their art has been ignored.

      My father spent his life thinking

      about money though he knew

      it causes most of this stupid violence,

      & he thought of me as a sensible person;

      you have the chemical for sensible, he said.

      There was no tragedy between us,

      unlike how poor Joyce wrote

      that his daughter turned away

      from that battered cabman’s face, the world.

      i didn’t turn away because i don’t know

      where it is, it is all over, & when it seems

      pure nothingness has come to pass,

      i know another animal prepares itself

      nationless, not sensible;

      thinking of it helps a little bit—

Extra Hidden Life, among the Days

      Sometimes , when i’m

      very tired , i think

      of extremophiles , chemolithoautotrophs

      & others with power for changing

      not-life into lives , of those that eat rock

      & fire in volcanoes , before the death

      of the world but after the death of a human

      , of their taste

      for ammonia or iron , sulfur & carbon

      , somehow