Dew Settles; Our Beloved Explorer Considers the Role of Evidence

The cloud-numbed night sky is a warning, confers

mauve to bluestem, starlings’ tongues,

imprint of a coat’s seam on a right cheek,

exchanges white-age for twitching synapses,

translates sigh-sickness into cymbals’ shudder (maybe treble,

maybe teeth, baby fingers grip a cricket carcass),

rips the calloused rind from hard cheese, cyst &

brittle-bitten fingernails, bats wheedle through elms.

And if this is broken I will remain broken,

maintain oval-dreams. A drop of egg white

on the formica countertop, dew-wet cotton sweater,

egg yolk cloud-seductively sliding the curl-steel bowl.

The starling’s breath smells like a morning-wife.

Moon-precarious: so goes carnival, the whirlwind-world

said Helen to Paris’ slave as she broke another vase,

said the pink thumbtack to the dead starling’s eye.

She Uses Her Pinky Finger When She Types

Suppose there was an ice cube left over from the Napoleanic wars

     & I’d bought it at auction, Christies or Sothebys

          or something like that & all my friends were like

“Why the fuck are you buying that ultra-rare & ultra-expensive ice cube

     when you can barely pay your rent & your freezer is full

          of perfectly good ice cubes?” And my parents were all

“This time, Mathias, I just don’t follow your line of reasoning.”

And suppose that it cost like a million dollars &

     I charged it to my Discover card. And suppose that in sunlight

          its color is glacial-blue & dreampure-blue & remember

that the bubbles caught inside it are the air of Napoleanic France

     & that as ice ages it holds the sins of its owners inside & hence

          our international love of the polar ice caps.

And suppose we sat on the concrete steps of my apartment

     & you knocked your finger into the votive candle

          by which we were playing War after 3AM on a Tuesday Night/

Wednesday Morning, moon haloed & nightsky churning

     more violet by the minute & as you hit the wick

          it stuck to your finger, & left a small white burn

& I went to the fridge for ice & the only ice in the freezer

     was the left-over-from-the-Napoleanic-wars ice cube,

          shrouded in a insulating sleeve of black velvet

& I was all “fuck it” & I brought the ice cube out

     to ease your burned finger & maybe you’re half-pouting, playful-like,

          the pain hardly worthy of a pout but a pout being the very thing

that seems only permissible & even forgivable due to the pain

& I unwrapped the ice cube from its black velvet

     & handed it to you slowly, with an air of mock-stateliness

          & you held the ice cube in the palm of one hand

& slipped your burned finger over it night-breeze gentle

     as a child might pet an oddly affectionate koi fish

          in the backyard pond of her parent’s work-related friends.

Supposing all of this, would you let the melted water drip

     off the burned finger? Would you let it pool in your palm?

          Would you hold your wet finger out to me,

moon-halo, elms-in-the-breeze & moisten my chapped lips?

     I was born inside a paperback book.

Therefore I can never forget a word of this.

The elms are heavy with coming storm.

Lightning is of the same class as weapons.

The language of water is not yet forgotten.

You use your pinky finger when you type.