Presentism
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Construct a slumber house and let the leaves be guests.
Snare water in the leaves.
Drape rags on the twigs for a withered look.
Then light a red light.
Let wind drown the tree roots with fire-petals
as black-eyed Susans press
through late September like yellow births.
A fat-eye buttons the flaps.
The poet Mayakovsky said he felt like a cloud in trousers.
A little genderless . . .
although I wanted the little bobbins and tulle,
the baby, her mouth with the careful seam of Jewry,
the Lithuanian half. Rain in the light margins, so thick,
the house mottles.
Then over the inscription, a transparency / write in layers,
glitter and fly-wings, a fascicle . . .
include the autobiography, begin
they had crossed the country, both dark people,
but everyone mistook her father for the Jew and end
the cat is my muse.
Between the leaves, simultaneous threads resemble
stitching on folded moths, sequins, a stiffened blur,
the tooth in a purse (too simple and too difficult
to identify with the attic flower). No evidence
of childbirth, but envy
for the mother’s snore, the garden of nectar, feverfew,
Sweet William, cave blooms. Some things
that do not need to be rewritten in her slow breath
with the lemon snapdragons.
Try rewriting the world as you perceive the thing, so far past
accuracy . . . there’s the labor,
the fearful pressure at the opening. Can violence be self-
enacted, out-flicted, when you move through the frame
and beyond yourself, the spittle shape? So the edges
furl and disassemble, so the failures and the beauty are the same (o
relativist), so the details are never-ending, dusky
or light, with the small weight of trousers?
Try keeping an almanac of this.