ALL THESE THINGS I WILL GIVE TO YOU

What I’m Looking For

If I met you in sidewalk sunlight, and with one word
you dismantled my reason: your intimate angry voice,
your face alert to trespass so no one mistakes your
smile, your body turned smooth on a starlight lathe,

if I met you and you were balanced, carrying nothing
but your own occurrence, if your eyes were a blue
beyond repentance, and all this in one quarter of an
instant befell us, by the chance of our crossing wits,

if I met you and your superior senselessness stunned
my own measures of nonsense, but you turned away
running – would you, over your shoulder, call to me?
You would. You’d say “Find my house. It’s in the world.”

Crow

He squats in the frame
of a half-built sycamore tree

Walks sideways
along the tarpaper ridge

In the road he unties
the rabbit’s reed tendons

He slaps the manikin in corn
with a wing, and again

In a dream a white crow
flies beside him—an instant

He hushes the children
who would teach him to speak

With his companions, he
cheats his companions

Robed in black snow,
eyes closed, he studies the land

Practical Baby

You must wax his ears and dial them in.
You make him sit, and you stand behind.
You noise a bumblebee at each ear which
motivates escapements in the ear holes
allowing plenums on each side to pulse.

His eyeballs must be shucked and cabled.
You leave them overnight in oily eyeball bath,
then pupils pinged with an awl, not hurting,
which releases the seeds of lights and colors.

His nose is there, with its fractures. Just get
the wadding out and sneeze gunpowder.

Find the wind-up for his voice, a sounding spray
of words and song and argument: far down his
throat a tickle to his vocal folds with feathers
deftly wielded is sufficient to provoke his tongue.

Inside he makes and tunes the rest himself:
the way to his stomach is, despite appearances,
a garden. Transparent figures come to animate
the dark behind his brow. Now flame-like he
will stand upright, and sphinx-like he will think.