Bonnie Roy
‘ ' you caption the sight in a color. the body is known in relief on its floorboard, patterned around by vinyl and light. here as a reply to the sense you are craving: small wires wind the sore teeth in their mouth. I am opening the paned glass, I am stifling the shatter, I am sifting the feet from these shards. in beds of daisy and marigold the glass petals bloom a fine light.
‘ ' fixtures of oak and electric fence. little cribbed diseases come for you. I could lift each wrist from its bracelet and disappear into skin. I could hold each body under its bath.
‘ ' though I cannot care for you unless I can for everyone's anatomy. make possible elbow by elbow this leaning, make urgent browline by bloodline our empathy. hover my least as your breath. yours the lives that perch as text and testament. centuries flown upward now as hands. stacked under performance of grass, your foundlings adore you as jawbone and vertebra.
‘ ' informants of face and figure pick you out of indifference. I am holding my knees in my arms, I am telling my life by its code strings of three and four digits.
‘ ' some limbs among others are petrified. arranged here as hard matter, miniature stratigraphies. sleep me among silica, sleep me as though ages of hematite and iron assumed me. unterrified landscape. unutilized moonstrips of still weather. your steps in their instants are headstones.
‘ ' the dark eyes drown in their sockets. the electric doors open us into. cast of circuitry and stale parts. dear sadness we have given our mouths to you. dear centuries we are begging you not to. |
Nothing beautiful will ever upset us again.
Nothing terminal. We will not have to list
each species of moth, the beetles,
the entire ecology of water. Each morning
summoned by finches and valkyries—
we are already enormous and sorrowed,
nursing a sky blown open
by rampant geraniums. Dulled monocots
in the windows, architecture and vehicles,
we loathe you, we loathe you not,
and we are the ones of gorgeous volition,
turning your parts in our hands. But even weather
cannot make its mark on the landscape indelible.
I am writing to you with two barbs of light at my right and at my left.
I am crosslegged and far from you, holding out your names I am not sure of.
I am crosslegged arranging your names in my lap. I am arranged as a cradle to take
you.
At my fingertips, letter by letter I am tapping you out, changing the screen light to
dark as I look for you. I am rocking left to right for you, for all of you.
Left to right, I set through our imaginary inter. The nevers between us like spaces of
white encircle each word I send to you. Each thought I set within them is scattered
through with light.
I am moving my fingers through letters and functions to find you. I am testing each
combination of keys to find you.
I am holding you. I am trying to let hold of you, but you are lovely to reach towards
where I cannot speak and cannot leave you stray.
I am crosslegged and cradleshaped to reach you. I am rocking your names I don't know
in my lap.
I am at this screen that pulls your names from my fingers. I am stretching all my
names for you against this light, tapping towards you left to right. I am listening for
all of you, I am turned always towards the flicker of finding you.
I am figuring my lap for you, rocking left to right and left to right to speak to you.
Between barbs of light I am twining dark towards you, cradleshaped and crossways
to get to you.