C1: Atlas

Below the ceiling or keel
of the skull (depending
on the body’s orientation towards
instrument of injury) the spine emerges
as rectitude and rectory, a basal frame
extruded to span from the ego’s reach
to the soles’ foundation. Historically,
recovery from a fracture here indicates
reinforcement with titanium
and may present sequelae stemming
from inversion about the axis of pride
to the head’s decline through diminishing degrees
of freedom. In some case, the eyes persuade the shoulders
to confuse the burden of the world above
with the body’s weight. In the literature,
the efforts of foreign tongues
to approximate the vantage that English
has long enjoyed from its origination of skyscraper
support conclusive evidence of suffering
as cultural inscription.

C2: Axis

Even if sleep is death’s diminutive
we will not concede it could maim,
though for some the hanging
moment that opens between waking
life and the descent towards morning
whispers a terminating sentence.
And when sleep looms
draped in gallows’ humor
to suspend the spine,
in the night we grow taller,
nodding, already unconscious
of the boots dropped on the floor
in the evening prior
and the greater distance to fall
as we follow them.

Self Portrait, Castello Bibbiano, Italy, 1999

Propped up against the wall an unhinged door
slants acutely. From behind it two hands
emerge—or are they sinking, its shadow
reclaiming the last human evidence?
If this is a portrait, it’s a portrait
not of a man, but his body’s absence.—

What man is depicted by the absence
of himself? Gradually has the door
erased him, a timelapse of self-portrait.
It has avenged its lost hinges, the hands
it took as trophies give evidence
of his hubris. At right, the door’s shadow

extends. The walls’ corner draws the shadow
away from the door to contrast the absence
of body behind it. No evidence
must mean something. But nothing’s there, the door
hides no thing,. No effort made by the hands
to grasp no thing. Calling this self-portrait

sunders the self—each piece needs a portrait
of its own. Consequently, the shadow
has an equal presence to the hands
and everything else in the room, absence
included. Frayed wiring, empty door
frame, exposed radiator, evidence

comprising a whole body, evidence
of precise intentions. Thus self-portrait
includes tiles and walls as skin, the door
is another limb, the muscled shadow
flexes along the edge of the absence
of the human torso under the hands.

Unaccounted for though are those two hands,
the still anomalous evidence
of the human body amongst the absence
of the rest of his body in the portrait.
Light pours from outside the frame, the shadow
runs from them, the hands framed over the door.

Yet the hands remain, bits of self-portrait
less evidence of self than shadow—
the room filled with the absence and the door.

Litany

I am an answering machine
in a sleepy midnight email. Typed
questions have no human tone, yet
I have to answer.

I am an answering machine
in response to the years apart. Time
passes marked by mistakes for which
I have to answer.

I am an answering machine
in the night-emptied street. Drunk
on everything, even a phone call,
I have to answer.

I am an answering machine
in conversations about me. Honesty
is at once surrender and challenge, both
I have to answer.

I am an answering machine
in my dark room. Arms enclose
and hands fold together,
I have to answer.

I am an answering machine.
Whether you like the truth
of my words or their sound is immaterial.
I have to answer.

Personal Ad

I want someone
scared and alone as I am,

distant and barely moving.
Binary stars, a thousand light years

apart, spiraling in slowly, orbital
math on a scale so small

gravity doesn’t notice. That way
convergence is ours first,

the universe’s, second. Everything will
matter in that order.

Zen Anaesthetic

From two decades of anger:
my body’s origami shape.

Everything layered
inward. Perfect sheets

of pain that threaten
to tear when alone become

compounded a thousand-fold
into a tempered will.

The painstaking effort—
the calm through the violence

of forcing my shape
to accept the designs.

Staccato

for Franz Wright

Choose:

Shotguns loaded
with words

vs.

a thousand pages, rifled through
at 125 words per minute

centered on
the hole in your
head, your shame’s exit

which you want seen.

I didn’t invent eyes, not
mine.
I can’t uninvent them

there are no words
with a cigarette. Still

you’d say
fuck it, I’ll give everything
at once

Or?

Or nothing. Go

ahead,

shoot. I’m listening.