Stage
I make the science, the spinneret,
fielding the population
with a skull like a great arcade,
my love, the room broken
into melodies and the melodies
broken into speech. I paint the diagram
of the interstitials and apply the metals
to my eyes. The vacuum
holds, is my keeper,
while a delicate infinitude glitters
along its fine thread.
Love, we would impress,
in the warmth of the exegesis,
with our spells slipping
into dental percussives, the click
of the sex adhering, of the firm dawn
that has wheeled around in front of us.
Volume
Sing stop, the organ knob, the private echo. Bonnie
in the morning light,
I told you, and smart about the afternoon.
But what bird stuff could chance
to lever a mind?
The great blood-sugar thrum, the steel winds
whose noise I equalized against?
Do I tell you a story, my love, or is this
publicity? Chin up through the adverbial corrosion,
the stinging slapjack,
this wind too large for the crop and woe
this gauntlet of thieves. I married you once,
and I’d do it again.
I’d flatten the bill into transparency like
a persistence of years. Come the service
and the deficit. Come the earring and the buckle.
The incorporated injury. The patient exercise.
Watching you gather
yourself into a single word, watching
the word, watching it all the way through.
Come alleyway, come ballroom.
Come throat and entreaty, the respirated flesh
and the electric night.
