THE DAY RATE
The news
didn’t relieve us, possibly
drawing
along a notch in a hot-pink stick
what was
folded in hot batter the other week.
Hours got
lighter by exhaust and prevented stain.
We think,
we can grow our company. Cupboards
stuffed
with nuts and dates, radix angelicae
safflower
and weakened water, shampoo
of egg
yolk, sinless blanching toothpaste: to be ready
and
always good enough, clean for quickening.
We didn’t
use to be religious. But the round head…
My hands
began to bloom, and my feet in shoes,
even with
blood thinning up the elevator shaft
and
further work for the taxable heart I arranged
weeks for
my hall monitor. Sighted.
Awake in
a topography of this new gut, which one
bisects
and taps as panels for waiting echo:
thins
over the tape, tugs the ring-pulls on each corner,
or
solaces a disruptive kid in carbonated
but is
never known to pound at home in the kitchen.
We took a
little hope from this good conduct;
on wards
in isolation the sound muffled is total alien.
But when
change ends that hope ends of a different life.
We have
managed to get this far without water,
but the
vehicle slows and stops in the middle of nowhere
tires
overblown like cartoon puffs, macadam broken.
After
rushing wind the silence is like nothing:
but after
all it is not quiet, the blades and beads
push
vocally from the ground and you all continue.
In
everything you make by that continuing
I will
register and sit back down, and the air will fall on me.
Ready now
call in the evac unit. Transitions from promise
to
fiduciary agreements are never easy, but we try
to make
things simple, drawbridge over
the Great
Dismal Swamp guarded by experts
in
flushing out insurgency. My arm buzzes
as the
intruder creeps into the citadel,
I am
half-awake in recovery and light as plastic.
I will be
able to run again, a literary agent
interring
the future pattern when it drops again;
the light
is wakeful, not quiet, the front again calm
but those
will be some days until I can believe
anything
I read without feeling singularly human.
