52

threads
in your teeth

a sheet
in a rumple

partially
loosed breath

left out
to darken overnight

shake out
the pillowcase

a case
against rain

51

I don't know what to do now,
except to write number fifty-one.
I don't know any Alice. The point
is that I came here to refute
something else: I never met
an Alice and therefore cannot
nevertheless and refute the fact
the contingency, the snarled storyline,
the lie of Her. Yep, there she is.
It turns out, I care nothing
for Plymouth Rock, or its
resonances, repercussions—
except in the general way. I am
refuting something I dismiss
casually from my mind, a minor
move with big ramifications.
Move on, woman. Use
your argument somewhere
else, right? The next poem claims
something of the moon, more
familiar territory, I guess, less
at risk, less contested. Oh, and let's
go to bed. Dreams are of a time 
and a whistle.* A book is a waste
of time. Just use your body.




* Italicized line from Alfred Starr** Hamilton.
** I had a cousin once kind of so many familiar shiftings

50

I can't hear myself
for the howling
several dozen states
away, plus a couple
of decades. It's true:
I can't see my hand
in front of my face
because it's gripping
a stone in my left pocket.
An image of a windsock,
both fiercely and feebly
orange. The darkening
palpable. The first
slapping drops. Here
is where we smell
the charge in the air.
Now is the moment
we detect the quivering
in the skin of the dog
at our feet. The backs
of our thighs are embossed
in the plush pattern
of velour flowers ganging up
on the threadbare armchair.
The bursting in of glass
at each window, per
-cussive. The eerie silence
between the booms
of the tossed trashcans
in the street. The crack
of the twig-snapped pole
and the fizz
of the downed wires.
The television already
lifting its heavy feet.

49

I let go of the pen, forgot the pencil, denied
having any alphabet at all

My stuff was loose, open, broad and as light
as morning, uncontained

I took in large volumes of air and expanded
I took up every crevice

Everyone already knew my name

Stillness defined the lines of my muscles,
clanging against a weirdly violet sky      I twitched,
but only every twenty seconds

Space has no weather, I guess

In the forest, the silver alphabet conceals itself
on the underside of a trillion leaves

Each night obliterates every fluttering word

I emit the purest photons
straight into your receptive retinas

Words words words words     blind you   and don't hush



*An antonymic revision of NIGHT by Alfred Starr Hamilton (p 96)

48

And today was
a bead on a string.
Today was. Today
endures, remembered
amid rain-blurred green,
the light the light
the filtering.

Every few hours
we sought shelter.
Every crack
in the pavement
guttered with
the glitter of rain.
Each clack
on the sidewalk
a passing.

Green trough
we ran along.
Green and green
and yellow. The squat
dog chased the ruddy hens
as we laughed. The men
asked for money
as we apologized.
The bricks were laid
in curvaceous array.

I look at the rivers—
twinning and meeting,
both splitting and doubling,
in the curved hip
of their intersection—
and my chitinous
shell dissolves
in a fizz of
released breath.

Every hand-painted sign
signifies like a stud
in the tongue.
Every wet step
a setup. Each hill
slides into the hill
beyond, nestling
into the convergence
of two rivers.

We overlook it
from the bridge.

47

[expired]

46

[expired]

45

[expired]