Poetry

Numbers scraping their heels all night in the attic above them. The accounting was necessary but brought them near death. Like a fountain emptying itself for the tourists. Couldn’t the woman in the restaurant in the booth in the semi-     private room open her shirt? In one view the numbers represented his errors of…

Was wir nicht denken können, das können wir nicht denken; wir können also auch nicht sagen was wir nicht denken können —Wittgenstein A bewilderment, his wilting sense of betrayal, a wilderness— he composed the history of his own privacy. If you can’t imagine it you can’t think about it; you can’t talk about what you…

In the new film, the subtitles make the picture blurry, but it is an old film. What is the same in any part of the world? A field. Trees at its edges. The figure approaching us. Inside, the plaster falls from the ceiling nightly. What is the other source of sound? The instrument was going…

In the shower linoleum then floorboards then earth in     which the depths please send me away but see she cannot leave the house see what     has been done is thorough like something a cloth has been rinsed in or used for tied across the eyes I have taken precautions leave no     address…

Shadow of a bubble. Word, my world. One: it issues from a shadow’s mouth, shadow one carries where one goes. One goes alone and two go alone. Three: without the sun, there would be no picnic. No picnic, no shadow of a bubble. No word, no world. One: it issues from a shadow’s mouth, shadow…

Everyone was happier. But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. They didn’t want it collecting in their elbows or knees then popping up later. The girl who thought of the ponies made a lot of money. Now a month’s supply of pills came in a hard blue case with a handle. You…

The chair. The ice. The day in December when the chair was useful. Its broken seat. That, too, was what I offered up to you, but to what use. The light filled the curtains, the curtains conducted it into the room where they were talking, one standing near the chair, one smoking by the door….

It was near here. In a street similarly shining, going to the movies, and when you asked your new acquaintance, what does [sic] mean? he left off quoting The Paradiso: “sic transit gloria mundi for example,” and you felt stupid— Then the Callery pears, fruitless clouds of urban bloom stood up. Other days lit, globed…

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay breathing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces…