NO SMALL ASSAILANT OF MIRROR-LIGHT

It is the first day in October and how I burden the apartment

with sneezes lemons from the bodega exploding with seed

Someone set a pagoda on fire on the edge of

the lake, my nose still running, Once I Had an Earthquake

in my ears It is the first with sneezes how I burden

the edge of the apartment with earthquake with

whisper-talk, how humans make caricatures of air of

the reanimated now She lied when she swore she wouldn’t read

the moon any longer, no small assailant of mirror-light

In my ears the edge of whisper-talk of mirror-light

Then I is heterogeneous electric with broken ghosts

Don’t use words Don’t use words Don’t use words

* * * * *

Getting drunk keeps cornering the brain and in that we punctuated

happening but you are the one bereft of intelligence, thank

god I never wanted Wednesday to end never wanted

the separations to endure The church tolls the time I sneeze

The neighbors take Silence their dog, out for a walk

When we confide we do not confine incipience a flooding that adds

imperceptibly to deluge a surface that glues itself to the surfeit

I want to sleep in the sleep that you sleep as ferociously

one must drive on to tenderness Repetition is desire

I sneeze with sun a cool wind on my arms, half-grown wrist wisps

from recent surgery, my pelvis not long closed and in the deep

stiletto branches I’m always touching double-jointed

women, imperfect vision Silence insists on so much noise