Between the Folds

Yes! We are at the collapse.

This paper,

bowlegged in our hands, gives in to pre-creases

and a new arrangement of layers.

A young art form seizes us

with a thin-fingered obsession, like the periods in which Picasso

painted with one color.

Finally! A monochromatic vision!

After twenty years of our lives,

we learn to make something we can’t duplicate

or hand down to others through diagrams.

The manipulation

seemed to be/ tasted of / sounded like…

But we are still afraid!

Of the passivity of paper

and the problem of looking trivial

in its progress,

an accordion of thought

and rose-colored glasses bent out of shape.

We are looking weaker

every day

around the corners –

trying to make new edges, a precipice

to stand on, willing things to happen, organically,

on a quiet street in Chinatown.

In the beginning, we didn’t know what would be possible.

Now, we fold with the neutral hands of a sculptor

who adds nothing

and takes nothing away.

Instructions to Myself

Follow a disaster down a real or imagined street,
between the lines where jack-o’-lantern housing
squats like an orange cento.
After the candle is lit,
the lid is replaced. It is the fear of growing old
which glows more bold within the absence of an outline.
Katydidandkatydidnt, chirps the fineprint
of your contract with sentience:
a tessellation of sentences
in which you are the noun.
The observer is observed, and so on.
The Whole World seems to be emulating a leaf.

If you could be quiet enough
to say it again, and here –

Dear America (f):

This is a letter calling all curls
to the silk control
of better homes & gardens.
What I mean is, there is not much else to offer
but different versions of what you already have.
We have a word for that these days. It’s called
(insert product name here).
America is always at a loss.
(For what to say, & otherwise.) To try
is to succeed.
Do you have the latest
next
best
thing?
There is always a thief
in the attic. This country has gone to the dogs
or to hell – it is either
going, going, gone
or in the going, gone
anyhow. There’s not much else
to say, except
if you can’t save it, you can at least
save yourself,
if you buy products X and Y
& solve for both.
But because the parentheses
override normal precedence, you should first
find (m).

Somewhere along the axis of America
is you, the consumer, at n distance
from the origin,
making a deal at the crossroads
of two mutually perpendicular
planes.

Litany

In many ways, a litany

is like a bar of soap, a very old

bar of soap found in the corner

of the medicine cabinet, behind the mirror;

thin like a bleached shell

dug with half a dozen dark half-moon

fingernail crescents,

and folding at the edges like a stale,

damp fortune cookie.

In many ways,

a piece of faux wisdom is better carved

on a bar of soap, where it can be rewritten

again and again

and wear itself thin

cleansing the soul, and the body,

and the mind.

I

Carved into a bar of soap,

I, I, I:

fragment curved and

flaked at the edges.

It was the easiest assertion,

fading after every wash

between its own

hands.

There was more that she

wanted to say –

could not say –

could not risk the writing.

To write one’s name on something – they said

that was the point of living.

To be the narrative “I”

on a bar of soap, the subject

of one’s own sentence – that, she thought, was

even more desirable

and less likely to be
heard.

How to be a Writer, etc.

1. Follow a disaster down a real or imagined street.
2. You will have to be obscure: twist its elbows until the text
     cries out in pain.
3. Without a tendril of thought
     falling into its eyes, there was no ending, really.
4. When the letters get wide, you’ll see.
     (Poems are no one exception.)
5. There is something you’re trying to sail around. The prime meridian
     of everything is, happily, defunct.

Parting

In early summer, everything was a question. Even my clothing

was a question in answer

to every question she asked. My sleeve,

an apology. My hem, a parable. My shoes, a superstition

to which I stitched my shadow – telling it Yes, now follow

me.

The prophecy poked out at the seams and looked

like the back of a tapestry

trying to get to the front, without losing four corners.

But when one walks away,

away

has no coordinates. It is a single thread unraveling

from its origin,

a question and answer spun together

with no relation to corners. Even the answer

was a question. Even the question

was a parting.