2,071 Readings | 2 Ratings
Just Bodies
How a fire spooks a field out of its hallows,
prone raccoons trapped within,
hemmed by freeway rubble filthily burning.
Darker. How each one appalls a little wilderness
curdled in smoke. Darker still. How the moment
begins in space and travels timeward,
my father changing lenses in the brush
until it’s hot enough to melt the glass.
Think of the darkroom, an archipelago
of thirteen photographs drifting under fillips of roach-wing,
and a sawdusted boy smelling of acid and strychnine:
that kind of remember. Think of sorrow as landed,
heritable. Biblical kings twined to brass idols,
face down in the irises where god
keeps his hidden cameras. Just bodies,
just the stubborn fauna of memory. When I addressed
myself: limb, this righteous.
Blood, this mad honey. When I thought past
them to their dark remainder. When after
the instruments reaped the last feeling from my arms
I slipped under. Think of the body
like the trapdoor
the magician escapes through,
leaving only a vague sense of trespass
and the wonder of whose heart kept asylum here,
against what strict bone. Tekel,
not to be weighted, not to be throttled.
Upharsin, to be divided, humbled.
Not to listen, not to look.
Darker. No, too dark.
prone raccoons trapped within,
hemmed by freeway rubble filthily burning.
Darker. How each one appalls a little wilderness
curdled in smoke. Darker still. How the moment
begins in space and travels timeward,
my father changing lenses in the brush
until it’s hot enough to melt the glass.
Think of the darkroom, an archipelago
of thirteen photographs drifting under fillips of roach-wing,
and a sawdusted boy smelling of acid and strychnine:
that kind of remember. Think of sorrow as landed,
heritable. Biblical kings twined to brass idols,
face down in the irises where god
keeps his hidden cameras. Just bodies,
just the stubborn fauna of memory. When I addressed
myself: limb, this righteous.
Blood, this mad honey. When I thought past
them to their dark remainder. When after
the instruments reaped the last feeling from my arms
I slipped under. Think of the body
like the trapdoor
the magician escapes through,
leaving only a vague sense of trespass
and the wonder of whose heart kept asylum here,
against what strict bone. Tekel,
not to be weighted, not to be throttled.
Upharsin, to be divided, humbled.
Not to listen, not to look.
Darker. No, too dark.
Posted 01/25/12
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