Four Pieces

when was the last time you approached a color’s name?

the last time you cried, what caused it?

what word hides in the newest cavity of your teeth?

mine’s terror, but we already knew that.

what awaits you on the other side of satisfaction?

where does motivation home in your body?

where do you hurt worst?

who do you feel most at rest with?

do copper and rust bring to mind the same taste?

what question are you hoping i won’t ask?

clearly mine is where do you belong.

can you know a place without touching it?

how far can you see before you struggle to make out the future?

do you deserve the luck you’ve found?

what comes to you first in silence?

what sound is creeping across the base of your skull?

mine is the low note on the organ, though i don’t know which.

scene: golden light spilling over golden field. in the distance, a great white beast gathering for its own good. bordered by trees, lush with life, full and green, upright and strong, even the leaves stretch taller. implication: natural, inherent, pride.

alternate scene: sturdy posts bordering the foreground, silver shining under the beating sun, barbs twisting an unspoken threat. green flecked with gold as far as the eye can see. the mouth of a machine gathering in the distance. implication: ownership, defense, cultivation.

improvised scene: mud-caked boots cocked against the post, worn-through denim wrapped with leather, glinting silver horns positioned at the waist. brim tilted low over the eyes, wheat between teeth. implication: threat, effort, earned.

The mouth of smoke swallowed around me.
The frame broke, what held together now loosed

set free, I could say, though I didn’t, I don’t.
50 said my mother, More, said my aunt, Rest, cried

my back, Really? I asked. A name etched by an unmade
hand, I mean an unmanned hand, I mean the mouth
of a robot, or smoke. I mean I swallowed around the smoke.

Headache, said my brother. Untranslatable sound
of heave said my uncle. We were scared, said my aunt.

A circle is only two destinations entwined. I don’t know
what that means either. What shape is made by two stairs
joining, facing one another, wrapping around both sides
of the wall.

Not a circle, says I, but a circle nonetheless. I mean
this literally, I tell you, so you know how to read.

My brother ascended his first step and I descended my first
step and we continued like this a synchronized dance each
movement a perfect mirror of two unalike bodies following
a path just alike as his body was swallowed by the floor above
my body was released to the floor below released or birthed

I could say, though I won’t. Three times, I said.
We were just the same, I said. You went up, I said
as I went down, I said, at exactly the same time, I
said, it was so cool! My mother, a parrot. My aunt,
a silence. My brother,

here, a faint sky. painted neutral.
here, a pile of nails in the palm of a hand.
here, the hammer. here, the wall. here,
the hole leaking dust, the nails held
by the body of the wall. here, the rejected
transfer. here, the night. here, the howl
of anger in a torn throat. here, the release
of air from the tire. here, the scrape
against curb. here, the body
of the car lying motionless on the side of the road.
here, the day yawning over the horizon. here,
the static fuzz of connection. here, the money owed.
here, the money spent. here, the voice of a stranger.
here, the lies piled in the past leading to this
moment. here, time slipping on itself, directionless.
here, the steady drip. here, the waste.
here, the closed fist. here, the fissure.
here, waiting. here, waiting. here, waiting.