“I thought I would die if my name didn't
touch me, or only with its very end, leaving
the inside open to so many feelers
like chance rain pouring down from the clouds."
~Rosmarie Waldrop, CURVES TO THE APPLE
it was always about choosing
up or down
it became a filled in space
where my thoughts didn’t breed,
sufficient already
like babies who don’t know about their own
swimming
i became aquainted with stairs
couldn’t move through them slowly
i have to get them over with
i just felt spoken
once too many times
in places where
rain is still surprising,
my lack of thirst gathering me
troubled and wanting looks,
when fingertips are all i know to write with
so i sometimes
turn them inside out
make them bigger, bent up slightly
talk them through a
good deal on
baskets of fruit, places they can
curve around, if that can be
like getting at wholeness
i just felt knocked over
monstrous
a little too much like tires
or a professor of warmth in
the middle
of bathing
a day free of seasons,
trying to count the ways
people go home
trying to be more like
real things,
hands around glasses,
things we sleep close to and
press out of ourselves
in the morning,
the times when you sturdy, filled with pewter
became my
[despite myself]
rather than a bed,
prone now to weirdness
in large areas, fields, big numbers like death
or taking off my bandages
before
setting them down in your
estimated
fire
