Optometry

Optometry

The eyes are the portholes to the
soul. Scribbled in the pinwheel
of your iris, your sins. The eyes
are the bay windows to your
brain. A cat perches on a cushion
in the warmth of the light I am
shining into your eyeball. This
is a good sign. You have a cat
in both your eyes, although one
is a little bigger than the other,
a Maine Coon and a Persian.
Your eyelids are the curtains 
to the soul. You keep throwing
them open and closed. You are
beginning to worry the across
-the-street neighbor. She can’t
read your signal, but it looks
like a distress call. Can you
see ok. There are supposed to
be bugs crawling in your
valances. I mean your lashes.

In the Details

In the Details

The knob in the door.
The bulb in the lamp.
The Jazz Greats stamp
and what you paid for

Louis Armstrong’s cheeks.
The power in writing RTS,
how it negates the address
in the center. The creeks

a house makes, rivers
issuing from its leaks.
Or with the a, the creaks
of a house, the shivers

and cracks voiced and sent
to you. The one you forget
to carry, the sum that gets
reduced by a thousand or ten.

A Thing

A Thing

A thing for rocks.
A thing for trees,
for dendrochronology.

A thing for dinosaurs.
A thing for coloring books.
A thing for tambourines.

A thing for ginger ale
in airplane half-cups.
A thing for visible stitching.

A thing for grapefruit.
A thing for the Kennedys.
A thing for skeletons

and skeletons dismantled.
A thing for concealer.
A thing for pockets

and what we find in them
after a garment’s sabbatical.
A thing for things,

for finding one thing
in a pile of bashed in
things and dirt and dust.

A thing for the mud
the dirt becomes,
a thing for paleontology,

for using a paintbrush
to clean off a thing,
a thing for you

to call significant,
the thing in your chest
a bee sting, a bruise.

Quadruple Zero

Quadruple Zero

Which 12:00. AM or PM.
The AM begins at midnight.

The middle of the night
is the morning. Add an hour

to the time it is now, and
you’ve shortened the day.

Hit snooze. We’ve made
the alarm into the time,

our body responds to noise,
not to 7:04 AM, not even

to morning. The second
hand on a clock is really

the third hand, a finger
flicking time away like

crumbs. Why no half-
second hand, no milli-

second hand. In my hand-
writing, numbers are starting

to disintegrate. My eight
is less propped-up infinity,

more a headless snowman
in weakening gravity, the top

sphere pulling away from
the base, slightly. Should

I draw a line through my
zeroes to designate them

as zeroes, as nothings,
not letter O’s, not the vowel

of surprise and pleasure.
Bar the zero, forbid any

thing from getting in,
a sign clasping what

we slide it over, a gel
slipped onto a stage light,

but no color, no light.
A lens cap. How can I

know that my zero and
your zero are equally null.

What I weigh in my house
is not what I weigh in yours,

our weight shifts based on
the country where we are

or the planet. The number
that is sewn into the back

of my pants fluctuates based
on who made the pants.

And now, the makers of pants
cut them larger while holding

the number still, as if we were
shrinking within our garments,

our bodies, size four, two, zero,
double zero, triple zero, quadruple

zero, all sizes of clothing a variant
of zero since that seems to calm us.

Bedside Manners

Bedside Manners

The goal is not to horrify you.
But the goal is not to not horrify you.

When you wake up, how much
of the previous day have you forgotten,

how much from all your years
sticks. If we can remember something,

we can keep it, that is what we
think. The baking aisle in the supermarket,

between the boxes of cake mix
and bagged chocolate chips and shakers

of rainbow sprinkles. Breathe
that in, cardboard and powdery sweetness.

A bowl and wooden spoon rise
within you, then quickly recede, Nessie

and then flat lake water. I dare
you, try to keep what the sugar summoned.

I don’t mean to be mean. Try,
how about what the word evergreen does

to you, how sure you are that
beneath its satin there is a lesson for you.

Think of who you can mean,
how it made you shiver when the new boy

called you her, see how this
happens to us both, beside one another.