[untitled]
I: LOOKING AT THE
WORLD THROUGH A BAR OF BLUE SOAP
I’ve decided to stop
rotting. Each day begets another hour skewed. I’ve been here, turned, bolted,
ended up exactly where I was before.
I ask the earth for a
hibiscus bush. I watch her all day from across the street. When I sit down to
write her name, I can only manage a letter or two.
II: BUZZED
It’s April. I am one
day older, picking snails up from the garden. When they shrink I put them down.
Everybody drinks vermouth but me.
It’s April with a
split sky. I track mud from room to room. I feign a sense of ending, driving
home to Islands in the Stream.
III: READING ELENA
FERRANTE
Elena Ferrante writes
“from general disintegration, new composition.” Every day I wake up sweating
and spend hours staring at my phone.
IV: CHRISTINE
On this fifth day
it’s all I can do: knit fabric, shake with rage, eat an olive, forget you.
Every night a woman
wakes, packs a bag. She gets into the car and waits. Every night someone brings
her back inside.
There is always
something to fold. There are coins and/I always trace my way back to the person
I left roadside, staring at the purplish clouds on the horizon.
Her gaze stacks bits
of copper one by one. then they evaporate.
V: HIBISCUS BUSH
Some parts of me are
carrying: some parts are wrapped in wool.
Some parts of me are
still at Shoppers Drug Mart. But when I look at you I feel it in the loudest
part of me.
So don’t call this a
trick.
VI: THE PASSAGE OF
TIME
I practice saying
EVERY DAY YOU HELD ME BY THE ANKLES. Years from now will I recall the sobs
lodged in your chest? The nights we spent at Ted’s? Or the cab ride to the
airport, so wildly overpriced? These pile-ups take dates with just one letter:
E
VII: OPTIMIZING
I have held these pieces close to me. I have laid them bedside as I slept. But today you are a Portent for one who will dissolve me. I’ll take yellow roads or hills and dig up roots clung deep. She says omens only come around on even-numbered days.
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