I HAVE FELT THE NECESSITY FOR A CHORUS

24

Her breastbone pushed
up at the point
where her heart would be

Think about this page
as parts of
a non-pragmatic

map of the body, of both
our bodies, or the one
made when these compose

Rhythm is rhythmic
because it is erotic

Is erotic deterritorialization

that which
we call love?

(I want to music)

If so let
us flee from
the refrain

Let’s

25

I wished not to live
in a bathysphere

nor in the lines
of a caravel

I spent 32 days
without seeing a lick
of land

(the fat yogurt moon)

My father and I sawed
boards, painted them black
to fashion a bat’s house

When the bat died
we shook him out

(the black soda moon)

or else we filled our socks
with dirt, tied
the color-ringed ends

and flung them into the moonlight
for a sonar-trained tooth to catch

to watch, to prod
not to let the bat go

(the drug dreg moon)

26

It’s Saturday, so I go
to the park, where bulldogs
whine at the clop

a horse makes—when
I see a horse I
never see a horse

The sun forgets
us and fragile

illuminations from my lamp
appear in the window

across the street

Harangue
Lollipop

Orange tongue

Thus I steal
with relaxed muscles

allowing each miniscule parcel
to pierce me with the thrill

of its transference

Thus I have felt
the necessity for a chorus

27

When the Catfish
is in Bloom
the afternoon

drags saturnine in its blue
housedress, sunlight
shouting through the leafless

trees, an improvisation
voiced by ice

What is it not to teem?

I like to think of the intuitive
fret beneath our words

the way a voice slides only
to lift at its reticular

convergence

When I ask Gerald how
it’s going, his reply is always

the same: never
better

Gerald’s name is like a moon
also: Orange

28

Before I hear it, I experience
the lull before
the kettle’s whistle, even

over the lower
hiss of the radiator

My apartment is full of snakes
and birds, clocks and trash
made into art, or relatively I guess

lull
guess
kettle
hiss
full

Lorraine says February
is expanding

The ad says you may
experience faintness

I faintly recall walking
naked past the day trader

and as such there
is no nothing—it all

depends upon placement
the situations of the eye

ear, finger

provisional strings
looping to cross

at momentary nodes
of attention

Lorraine
recall
all cross
looping
attention

29

We awe even
at the airport

terminal’s chaotic banality—such

is it that
I refuse to

duplicate the world, starting
with the word, deflecting

instead
He said

fastened to a dying animal
but I think fashioned or

not
at
all