I’m looking for a body written in secret lines, indefinable flesh gleaming upward

A moment in the revelatory arc of disowning not-being. taut.

Time passes by in guises, ducking & frowning,

waving, holding out a cocked hat.

where to start? one toe poised over

the threshold of a nunnery

sincere in clarity

devastating of hope in its ungainliness.

i dream the air is full of fishes

nodding past me

& the sky made up of cracked haloes.

i thought i was seeking a specific

encounter: no, animality claws

back at the permeability of distinction.

watch as a flare of gold

lights the roof of its mouth. coincidence?

sly catalogues lay down amid the bushes,

foxgloves, snakes. i am no longer a

native speaker, emotional imaginary

dissents w/ the referents of my habitué.

unseated, i will slowly remove these forty-five nails

from my neck one by one, telling you as i unpick

& toss them away, how each came to be there.

the only way to escape life is to become a diamond or a mirror

or a book, & on certain nights, even i don’t want that. the faces

of our enemies contain much information it would be well to

observe. now there is a kind of shaking part,

where the joints & jaw & kneecaps & organs shudder & flutter

more deeply to remember their being-which-exceeds-language.

caustically retreat. a blaze of gone smells. slowly it is surfacing:

hair flat & gleaming like a palace, broad tectonic structure,

dripping lobes. the trigger, the unmet wounds, the source of all

your glory. dare to part the blue mouth. the gaze is a tunnel

tracking dated hallways of grace. what fear is, a thing which

we call living, sneaking between radiators & fridges, quiet

moments of pausing. between kitchen & garden. between

bus & restroom. between rent & payday. between sending

a message and getting a reply. between grasping & yielding.

between a straight line & its folding. between the sensual &

the airless. between the sexual & the stale. between

waiting & arrival. between hatred & forgiveness.

between fate, & every moment we have not lost. between

staying & passing through.

you!

body of unnameable radiations

dissolving in amniotic syntax:

meet my eyes