Hard Water

your name was a debt fragment

you had to read right to left

alone to your own

rent-to-own devices;

the tiny foreclosure’s addition

right up to the crease of it:

a bloodline like a book

mark settled in the buyer’s guide.

~

the republic’s last aperture;

linear has lost all residency with you.

the large black sofa sinks into itself.

there is nowhere to sit.

you stand outside

of the one vote allotted to you.

~

some nights you can’t sleep

require a more imperial membrane

salt trespass

your say, short of foetal

takes time-released capsule

takes facial indeterminacy

to have gotten this far through the yearbook

to drunk dial all your old dirigibles again

to hang up

without having your say

so big in that sky

~

in this dream a police presence.

you search

every emptied room from your childhood

with a dowsing rod.

you can’t even remember

what it was you were looking for.

everything left

the way it wasn’t.

the TV starves itself on the same channel.

less itemized now than . . .

maybe a notebook, a faulty CD,

a few strip plugs;

the slow stave of memory:

the things you forgot to turn off,

a night-light with nothing

to shadow.

~

instead of the titles and deeds,

tiny claw marks in the impeccable

wood grain.

inside the display case

you don’t find the display.

~

as one flashlight tags the insides of another

you have seen your own scrutiny

mechanically separated.

how do the young loves do it

when it’s time for goodbye?

two clicks for no and then the total darkness.