not turn over. It seems
there are no middles
anywhere—there are only
logical lists in sensible places.
Perhaps calling my view
of the world palindromic suggested
you wanted a window to work
both ways, that you
wanted coffee to put you to sleep.
Disregard the snowbanks in your mind.
Remember that ice expands
as it freezes—its memory doesn’t
defer to urgency or to what
we desire. Snow
and legs keep moving through
the world listlessly. So much
for floorboards. So much for
absence that I once admired
or even desired as if
the world was in my shirt pocket
waiting to unfold
and scatter into the space between
the two of us. You suggested a shadow
could be musical
or that the neck of a giraffe mimics
the way some trees
stretch toward the sky,
free of knots and free of
the mark of history
upon them. It’s easier to say
the word quaint than to be that way.
Was your attempt at sensibility
a worthy one? I don’t know.
I don’t know how to place the weight of a breath
behind the eyes. Money is a strange sort of memory:
remember the market with nothing for sale?
Remember how we corresponded
for a month straight with words
corrupted from their meanings?
An ashtray wasn’t anymore.
Arbitration became so apparent
that suddenly knowledge (even a thought)
ceased to be incredible.
Take the words apart
and determine what a grin can be.
I’m not suggesting that grace deserves
a particular place in the world.
I’m suggesting that limitations
are rarely deserved by those
who impose them. Absence deserves
more. You said waterlillies
when I’m pretty sure you meant
something else, perhaps something
more distant. The sky was tinged
the color of a hangover that day,
and I knew better how to talk
to myself than to you. And then somehow
it’s Tuesday again
and a school bus speeds down
our street between the parked cars
like some kind
of generous distraction from
whatever mundane thing
was hanging over everything else.
Maybe that word was empire? Perhaps
you were hoping or desiring
a bottle to place this house
(like a ship) into? I’m
hearing one thing
and speaking another. My
shirts aren’t pressed. Hell,
they aren’t even clean
and their colors
have run elsewhere.
In my mind, I see them bounce
on the laundry line
and wonder why.
I didn’t understand what you meant
at the time, but it made sense
when I saw not a single bird in the woods.
The climate dissolved overnight
and you couldn’t have been more disinterested.
A squelched fire hangs in the air
and in the memory
for years to come. It’s a terrible thing
when we stop
and consider how having enough
means something
different from even a year ago. Think
of a swallow flying
from one tree to the next
and think of something from your own
life that runs parallel
to the experience of the first tree. There’s
nothing. It’s afternoon all of a sudden.
