scalding raw, wrinkled fingers.
Cool moving through hot, around hot, pockets
of little atmospheres.
The only thing left to feel:
the mix of fevers.
Remember the beginning, before science was necessary?
Now we know hot does not change cold in any way.
They move around each other:
spreading each other out—first pockets, then harder to recognize—
spreading each other apart, still cold and hot, broken into pieces:
molecules.
Anyone could mistake it for tepid,
that which is scalding and frozen at once.
DIARY [UNDERWORLD]
Somewhere between a father and lover
but not my father or any lover possible.
He says to say ‘the heat hit like a wave’ is not to account
for this impeccable stillness.
He says when I turn my head away it’s like the word broken.
And I am not the same when I look back
to where the world and its thick air are examples:
moth in a glass walkway; he calls me lambent, lucent.
I have changed form, but such things don’t matter.
It’s so hot the thin-skinned lemons are weeping.
Isn’t this what I wanted? Sick of deciduous life,
the dappled light, pointillist neighborhoods—
He leads me where no one has invented comfort.
He says July is a perfect month for snowfall.
LETTER [DEMETER TO PERSEPHONE]
In your place
there was
a dry color
turmeric?
cinnamon, cumin, cayenne?
but not like color, more like
cloves, cardamom, coriander
like coarse-cut salt on the tongue—
if I taste it will I know?
what is the color of fish in the river Styx?
Thumbprints and tracks
inside the door, lights left on
in the room, small things lying about—
days and days and days you have been gone
LETTER [PERSEPHONE TO DEMETER]
At home, the bells were a high light-yellow
with no silver or gray just buttercup or sugar-and-lemon.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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