whittled down to a single red trip wire.
Don't worry. Just call it horizon
& you'll never reach it.
Ocean Vuong
Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong
Isn't it this: that epistles
are about listening,
that the tip of the nib
is really just the beginning
that it travels back the entire
length of the arm & knows
instinctively it must turn
at the elbow and keep
going to the neck?
This is where I want
to ask, because there's
this fork in the road:
how does it know it needs
to split itself in two
like a blade of grass
that if torn down its middle
and held to the lips
and then blown gently
through
will produce if not music
then a sound truer
than music because it sounds
so like the body letting go
of something it had been
holding on to afraid
to hand it over
in good company. And see
the pale root end
of the blade of grass
is intact like what remains
behind while whatever needs
to split takes its time
past the clavicle to the throat
and parts - one to the chin -
and one toward the nipple -
tell me do you know
where words live? Behind
the bronze areola & through
the fatty memory of a baby
living there while life was
pulled out? Or otherwise:
into the mouth or nose or ear
on its way to the left
hemisphere where the experts
say language lives? How,
do you know, does the marriage
come together once
its all the way back
and down, dilating at the wrist's
anchor on the page, the fingers
pointed and apart like two
knees and the nib between
them remembering, remembering?
Someone's come a long
long way. They're soaked
from the dark and foamy
roads. They've stopped off
at their old home
only to turn off at the bottom
before going in. Someone
else lives there now. A stranger.
A family of strangers.
Maybe they're sitting
at the same table
where years ago you threw
the hot broth at the wall. Drops
of it, fat as snow, would fall
on my neck. The scars
like commas. This poet I know
calls them fetuses, those commas.
curled, paused, as awfully
dependent on what's come
before and what's yet to
arrive to be completely legit
-imate. It doesn't know
the first few words, Dear
_______, have been climbed
all night just to arrive, are entire
ranges dependent
on the weather and only
complete in the easiest
of seasons. Or the few words
beyond, flat as a johnny
cake you forgot
to add the leavening to
and tasteless after all that
stirring. Epistle #1: should say,
then: Dear ___________, please
forgive the delay, I've been
detained in the worst way. the two
spaces that resemble each
other on the body like no other
twins- even eyes - even lungs -
even limbs and kidneys - even
testicles and even ovaries -
maybe because they're resting
places: the divot above the lip
where Gabriel kissed
the entire Torah and then made you
forget it, and the divot just
below the neck, the jugular
notch, the yoke of knowing,
the jumping off the croft
with all the words and worlds
swirling and twirling you've seen
them, you must've done, some
are at the foot of my bed
some are at the bottom
of the pond and paused there
from when you stepped in
like a sachet of tea
leaves and steeped and steeped
the clean water, Dear___________,
you are no longer thought of
as a body. I want you to....
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