Goes Without Saying

Goes Without Saying

What goes without saying, some things
do. What should we know without
speaking. Can we differentiate when truth rings
out in all brains, and when we ferret it out

because it has been withheld from us.
How much direction do we need, the sign
saying Please Flush Toilet, not just
one, but several, to intercept any line

of vision: in the stall, near the faucet,
above the silver Dyson Airblade.
From the sign, the bathroom seems desperate
for you to agree with the rules it’s made.

Magic Eye

Magic Eye

When you focus your eyes,
what are you unable to see.

The chair loses its doubled
silhouette, slims and simplifies

like a woman sucking in
her stomach and tilting her

pelvis out to exaggerate
the sharpness of her hipbones.

The undulating darkness
of a bedroom settles, stills.

Look more quietly. Make
the corner of your eyes

their new center, so you
can see what flits about

you peripherally, really.
Try not to startle it away,

whatever it it is, your two
pupils boring into it like

black headlights. Allow your
gaze to slouch, let it yawn

and stretch an arm over the
shoulder of your blind spot.

It’s been following you since
you recognized your first face.

Text-Based Art: So Many Selves

The blue (periwinkle?) wall was too good to pass up. I'd like to go leave letters around the neighborhood, if I could. Until then, there's Photoshop.

I wish you (and your various selves) a delightful weekend.

Jet Lag

Jet Lag

There are so many selves these days,
living in many places at once.

When we travel, we leave a self back
at home, to remind us what we

would be doing if we wouldn't have left.
The traveling self receives

the thoughts of the one at home, as if
over a baby monitor,

feels unstuck from time. Yesterday,
I answered the phone

and spoke to Kathy. Sorry, who is
this, I asked, and she

said, Kathy, your across-the-hall
neighbor in number 4.

Not neighbor, actually, not for a year,
and a couple thousand miles

away, several states. It’s easy to
forget where here is,

when now is. In my Twitter feed,
hundreds of people

who live in places I have left, telling
me about the clouds

and mild temperatures, and out the
window here, clouds,

no snow. The town you return to is
only partially the place

itself. Your memory sketches over
it, like architectural plans

in reverse. It is still what it used to
be to you, every version.

House Keeping

House Keeping

Don’t forget to take your
house. You put it down
at the front door. To dry.
Because you had been
walking in the rain with it.
Mine’s the one with the porch
across the hall from yours.
They like each other, it’s
sweet. They play well
together, look how yours
taps the swing on mine.
And the swing set, with
the silver legs that can rear
up like an angry horse. Don’t
leave it here. That’s yours.
We don’t want some other
house falling over your
swing set, do we, now,
no, of course not. I would
never suggest that your
house is ill-behaved.
I would never. We teach
houses how to treat us
with the land we tuck
them into, the additions
we give them or snagged
screens that go unpatched.
There are no bad houses or
bad owners, just bad plumbers.