C. D. Wright

If one stood perfectly still. Even in the withering hours

of then. Hair down to here. Being alive and quiet.

One could forget oneself. Forget what one didn’t even recognize.

How mad it felt. Subliminally. One could pick out goldfinches

and mourning cloaks among the dying stalks of cosmos,

and across the ditch of grey wastewater they use to irrigate

the burial ground, a young man in a late-flowering tree

taking our photograph.

The set was on when she fell asleep

In black and white

a woman  was gliding through a garden in period clothes

and a child was touching

a pane of wavy  glass with the flat of her hand

Another woman

was all but flying down a spiral stairs in a flouncy gown

that showed off

the cut of her breasts and a lone golden strand

of hairplaying at her ear

It was because of…she didn’t want to grow any older

her resistance

was strong the dream’s spores hung in the air

in another room

a parent was dying in short shallowing breaths

she needed

somewhere to put all of that emotional excess

that’s the way

it was when she began talking in fake accents 

sleeping late

as a lake to avoid as many hours of living

dread as if dread

could be outslept; the stretch limo

in her eleven-year-old

head wrapped itself around the corner

That’s the way

it would be, everyone slender as drinking straws

nobody leaky

or hurting or abjectly religious, everything

allbillowyellowyorangeyflowywonderfulness

At 4 o’clock I am at the door

with a bare hand of snow

laughing shamelessly

I undo my shirt

we’ll pick up at the next chapter

my beloved are the words

of the rambler

if not the words the substance

the snow smeared across my front

warm to the touch

though we remain separated

as if by a chair

and I unwilling to read ahead

Whether or not the park was safe

she was going in. A study concluded, for a park

to be successful there had to be women.

The man next to the monument must have broken

away from her. Perhaps years

before. That the bond had been carnal is obvious.

He said he was just out clearing his head.

They followed the walk of pollarded pears. His tone

distant but not disinterested. It was

an expensive suit, she could tell by the cut.

His face blocked by the felted hat. The cocked night

studded with satellites. Women

were known not to enter a park

if they smelled urine. They passed under the arch

together. At this point, he allowed, it

would be fine by him if he could sit at his desk

and watch his writing happen.

The left hand rests on the paper.

The hand has entered the frame just below the elbow.

The other hand is in its service.

The left moves along a current that is not visible

and on a signal likewise inaudible, goes still.

For the hand to respond the ink must be black.

There is no watermark.

One nail is broken well below the quick.

The others filed short.

Or chewed.

The hand is drawn to objects.

In another’s it becomes pliant

and readily absorbs the moisture of the other’s.

It retains the memory of the smell of her infant son’s hair.

Everything having been written, the hand has to work hard

to get up in the spaces.

There is no tremor, but the skin is thin and somewhat

crepey.

The veins stand out.

The hand has begun to gesture toward its ghosthood.

Though at times it becomes almost frisky.

The desk is side-lit.

The hand has options, but has chosen to stay

inside its own pale, thin walls.

It has begun to show signs of its own shoddy construction.

The hand is there to express shouts and whispers,

ordinary love,

the afterimage of everything.

From the outside what light leaks through the blind

is blue, blue-grey.

There is a dog.

There is a fan.

The fan is on the dog.

The hand was having a hard time holding the pen.

A superficial cut.

A long clear silent night.

A book held open by a dolostone.

The occupant selects a sentence, No one knows

how small the smallest life is.

If there’s a call, it will not be answered.

A bath; the burning of sweetgrass soothe the limbs.

As a memory stings the brain.

The furniture serviceable but weird, on the verge

of grotesque.

The vein of light under the door is a comfort

To the occupant.

The air inhales the passerine lines of a single singer.

A motorcycle saws through the song and goes.

An appliance purrs at intervals.

The pen was bought in Gubbio near

the thin band marking the great dying of dinosaurs.

The pen, a gift.

It has been designed to coax a scream

of beauty from a fissure

of  hairiness.

Iridium in the nib

They walk around in the stubble

of the field sharing a wine sap

after he cut his firewood he liked to sit

on a big log and listen to his blood rush

she turns her head in time to see

a flat iron float through an open window

it is late afternoon

she avoids looking

in its direction

she could feel

it moving toward her

in shaky black lines

a dog has appeared at the gate

for the second day in a row

against a dirty peach sky

a single car wobbles into the sun