magnificent height
here in the non-light of evening
i am not magnetic or ringed or blue
like a sliver no sentiment arrives
and the ceiling is one magnificent height
and the man at the restaurant says
he will buy me all 63 of saturn’s moons
to get away with something like lightning
as god must/does
to be tugged along so enamored i keep
scuffing my feet
i try to see everything little beads of salt
matted white cream the man with the mooned brow
so enamored he keeps turning the sky
with his mouth
later we will all arrive in a similar order
in different fashion anvils nuzzling our spines
so we go out down roads we purchase tickets
we tie our own arms like strings
and a weight falls down on our backs
and he touches the knife
* * * * *
[and what we have come to, says “childless”]
and what we have come to, says “childless,”
says choking the throat of the lineage,
shedding its veined ribbon, its seep.
goodbye the chin-cleft, the bulbed triceps,
his burnt umber hair, its soft sheen, and mine
like a curtain of grain, our eyes big as barrels
in the evening, collecting their pangs,
collecting their ruins like small statues,
lining them up for the moon to see. goodbye
that room i grew even before the cord was cut
and my throat filled with noise, that room nearly
ridding itself, red quince flowering in rain,
all the torment and trace of it, as we taper
to no echo and no shadow and no line.