Call Me a Grown-Up but My Five Eyes Blink at Once

When I dug in the backyard I knew nothing      could cut me
Soft hair & a mind      trenching memory like dirt
like how the sound & taste of chewing snow is the same

my frequency framed in chives & locust-drawings
against fevered whiteness dipped      in fevered whiteness

***

Meet at the juniper where the creek turns east
For reckoning retain the ticket
366 days in a leap year      cognate child

A dedication in the microphone: fury of velveteen
     that was 18 years ago
You only feel invincible twice in your life

To dissect the rarified heart
     especially bird

***

Primordial fronds with 3D daffodils in the dreamscape
     chase large rodents into the ghost forest:

the animal in my right arm was a superhero cape
     a cape to give the younger brother with a hammer
the animal in my leg was the deep humiliation
of crawling up the stairs

     If the fever is age or anxiety      can I lean in
& sweep the whiteness away

I miss the charm of a sturdy memory like a missing limb

***

Now I can't stop gripping      grip with my neck
if I have to

I can't reenact the conversations
but I won't coat myself with milk paint

I see bodies but the words are gone      they took place
near a lake eaten by fevered whiteness
     as if a stone sums up the land that stands behind it

In the distance a soft child counting a sequence
     of ants or misters

***

Spidery arrangements      a child unnamed for safety
to double back & throw myself off      my own trail

I'm only embarrassed when I embarrass      you
the deepest well I ever fell into

Too busy relaying information to absorb it
"I didn't write it I only wrote / it down"

a hammer eliminates the need for help?

Drift-wood finish      basis of the charm
signs of soft child activity      show up least
     the marks of hammers

Fever takes you like an undertow      like mister

***

Help remember      calm me down to remember

I spelled my name with mud & sold it at a lemonade stand

If you misplace directions for making the deception
you want to make      use blood to color the milk paint
     behind the fence                           a curtsey

Anyone is anyone else because      deep down
they have a face?

Dab a little water without disease

***

It's exhausting      everyone asking to feel alive!

But I drew an incorrect candle or I drew the perfect
candle      & it was still rejected

The last seven seconds watch the body
roll away from my head

That log is not a bridge when the mud dries

Somewhere I am a goldenchild
     where I speak for the poem

Now beat      back against what you made





From Collateral Light (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.