Flooding In

Flooding In

From the chasms of outer space
that are unreachable.
Down through the atmosphere,
and the balled-up air underpinning it.
Through the clouds and smog,
through the upturned arms of branches
and into the scalps of evergreens.
Down through roofs,
wooden beams and brick chimneys.
Through pale and bowed ceilings,
and down through our skulls
while we sleep,
and also flooding in from within,
a tide, higher, higher.

Balance

Balance

What is standing across from me
on the other end of my seesaw

to prevent me from catapulting
into the sky. Or smashing down

through the floorboards, splinters
floating up like volcanic ash.

What is my counterweight, and
what body does it borrow when

it manifests itself to me. Does it
jump on and off, rattle my stance

by jiggling a foot. How steady is
the ground, right now. On a scale

of Richter-registered tremors to
Mount Sinai composure, where

is this patch of planet. Dear deity
of gravity, I feel there is something

between us. Thank you for sharing
this fulcrum so very graciously.

Plans

Plans

One night, when your body is readying
itself for sleep, you resist. Instead,
you go to the living room, twist the little
knob at the base of the lamp that calls light
back into the bulb, the shade. You sit
near the lamp and make plans. Tomorrow,
what friend you will call or visit,
how she takes her coffee. What errands
you will complete, a new umbrella
or bar of soap to purchase, the shops
you mean to explore but never do,
their windows full of glittering cookware
or single shoes turned out toward
the street, as if the wearer had stepped out
of them, through the glass and into
the world, vulnerable. Which restaurant
you will select, and why. The Japanese
place for its emptiness. Or that healthy cafe,
for who you once ate there with. You plan
not to cancel your year by eliminating
all space from it, shipping away your time
box by box. You will plan leisurely,
at the same pace by which you recall
dreams in the morning, kneading together
the pieces that surface by returning.

I Forgot About the Car

I Forgot About the Car

I forgot about the car.
I parked the car, and left it in the lot.
The lot was empty,
except for me and my car. I forgot
it as soon as the door
recoiled from my hand, a wing,
retracting. One moment,
I was in the car, braking, parking.
Days were fed in. Snow
fell like pollen and coated the floor
where civilized people
walked, shivering. The more
it snowed, the less I knew
about how I had gotten where I had.
Why had I come to the city.
Could I track my own prints, add
them and yield an origin.

Sticker

Sticker

Someone held this apple,
turned it beneath the light
to judge the grain of its skin, the color,
its resistance to being gripped.

To spare us this phenomenology,
apples get labeled.

Granny Smith, a sticker reads, and we ready
our tongues for tartness.
We know that our teeth easily dig into Gala,
and that the deep red skin of the McIntosh
is tough, slightly bitter.

So few experiences announce themselves to us
in this way.
At very least we can agree on
what happens in the unnameable darkness of the mouth.