between walk and fall
the little skin wants
a cut that can’t be crossed
a between wide enough
to breathe in even if
there’s not much living
on the other side
just more red edge
and less convincing
resurrections
hurt seeping back into
every place you cut
to let it out
_________________________
image: detail, Lutrell Psalter, British Library http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_fse007r
There are things between them that are things
on their minds—somewhere a beach, somewhere
a frozen pond. There are things they say,
they say to themselves things they don’t say,
there where the folded things are between
them, where there are things in the folds they’ve
put out of mind, things that have their own
lives there, groceries and lovers, sleep,
work, and lots nonetheless of wondering
why what occupies them occupies,
what else there might be past the fold where
there is only knowing things unknown,
where the gods that make are wooly mad,
they say, to give to take, to tick time
so, to wake us only when it’s gone.
As the entity in their house grows bolder,
the thing between them settles in—knocking
in the walls gets louder, appliances
begin to misbehave. He says it’s all
imagination as plates fly past his head.
What d’you call that? she wonders. What? he says.
At night utensils bang round in their drawers,
the hallway closet creaks and moans, and sleepless
in the small hours of the morning, he finds
the kitchen table standing on the chairs.
She has given up on conversation
when he starts to catalog each crazy thing—
it’s all she says in your imagination,
the light’s the moon’s, that sound’s a distant train.
Accidental Antenna 