New International Standard

In one version of the rules the commentators
will be lost for words won't find them
as the roof slides under the sky closing us
from the elements. We see we tied our safety
to colours and sometimes the most beautiful
phrase in a language is an expression of belief.
There are decisions I don't follow, reactions
the body has within its range and lets steal out,
a way of forming and deviating from assigned
patterns that takes my breath elsewhere. After
water next in the sequence comes community,
and it is riots equally as it is salvage. The feats
the body manages are athletic even at the stillest.
In one version of the rules the game continues
so we never have to answer the questions
of eventuality. A wave is tiding the stadium.
The goal line will extend around the world
even if I don't feel you, distant, crossing it
or get to break the plane beside you. Even if
the crossing of a boundary is not a resolution
it has a sound that cannot be octaved. Inside
a body inside a stadium. Lost for words
and elements I think of how a contest asks
of us a form of belief: in the dome several
pitted together act a persistent opposition.
I have painted a line on the ground. Where
it coincides with the end zone, the heat
shimmers visibility. This the eye believes.

Poem is reprinted from While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It (Nightboat 2013). Reprinted with the permission of the author. All Rights Reserved.