AN IMMEDIATE CARTOGRAPHY

35

Woke from a nap to the image
of a woman I had loved

naked on a couch, her hair
touching her breasts, a lightning

storm over Quepos, over
the Pacific Ocean behind her

What would it mean
for this to be a secret?

I want to negotiate
the obtuseness
of winter, seem unable

to do so, so
must listen

for the lusty salutation of spring

And when it returned we
were not so much
relieved as we were relived


36

When a single sparrow
perceives danger, the whole
flock warps

into rearrangement without having
seen a thing—how
much do you trust phantoms?

An immediate cartography

Insect scissors

and and then sky and

If you think
you’re not thinking
when you’re dancing
think again

My heart’s been one beat
too loud every
four, it’s effusive

knock troubling, the used-car
balloon gorilla trembling
its back to me through the window

of the train over
the Gowanus Canal

These words are holding
something by the middle

edges folding
over the edge

37

Dear Dear,

I had the same dream again last night. Except the servants had all become furniture. And when the world was to end, a low, insect-like song mysteriously recuperated it. This time, as the lights flickered against the walls they made a tiny film. A woman and an ibex transversing a frozen lake. When the power failed, the woman and the ibex were instantly plunged into the water. That’s when the song began. At first I thought it was the sound of ice fissures slowly zigzagging toward the shore, but the film was already over. I went to the window and peered into the darkness. The song seemed to be coming from outside. I stood back and kicked through the pane, which shattered silently on the rocks below. Except they weren’t rocks. Or they were, but they were covered with jellyfish. Piles and piles of them. Red. Hypnotizing. A sea of arms endlessly lapping. There was a second film within this movement. A man in a boat on a roof. His hand writhing like a snake before his face. The boat rocked back and forth. There was something about his expression that told me the world would not end. There was something terribly exhausting about his need to convey this.

38

I possess only distances

You and I both

know this is only
true in that it

is accurate, just as poetry is nothing
more than numbers, algebra, geometry
arithmetic and proofs

There is no separating me
from an economy

of me, blue
jeans, sweat beads
a knuckle airily

popping, record
player broken, the flitting
exigencies of song

arbitrarily carried by the street below

The mugs in the cupboard
shutter as a train
passes, the shifting limit

of equilibrium ceaselessly
lurching askew

I ask you to devise a monstrance
in order to bear
necessary questions

I ask you to think of the soldier
as a prosthetic

I ask you to remember the ending
of Cobra Verde, how Kinski finally collapsed
and the terrifically deformed man quit

his pursuit to gaze upon it

These surprises return
us to the galaxy named Fangs

A scorpion
A panopticon

I ask you to prepare an aperture

I ask you take my hand

I ask you (whispering) which
is the way that leads

me to you?