Field Blocks

Sometimes there is so much sky, you can’t see

out the window. The trees are snow again; the snow

is April rewinding its genetic code. The mice born

Crispred are young when they ought to be old. Ought-

to-be is a placebo of control. No one knows exactly

what belongs to us. The moon keeps falling

into poems—lozenge of love, etc.—a pinpoint to point

to when the earth gets unsustainable. The earth is

always unsustainable. The trees shake off their own

branches, or the wind does. The circuitry of living

keeps short circuiting. Shifty labyrinth, which like rhythm

is a word that refuses to be spelled right. I wait for

the rickrack red to un-underline it, tell me I’ve stumbled

into rightness. Stumbling-into-rightness is the best

I’ve come to hope for. A nerve block that hits the nerve

and quells it. The dentist says I have anastomosis. Crossed

wiring. My upper lip goes numb when the root refuses;

the drill strikes lightning to my earlobe. There is no

explaining me. Or a one-word explanation. Aren’t we all

open-mouthed in this season? Upended? Pincushioned

the dentist calls me on the fourteenth shot. I could make

metaphors. Gun laws/racism/redistricting. I could not

draw the line of my own nerves until they stun me. I am

desperate for the wrong right point for the needle to

deaden. I want a way outside my own mixed messages.

Each negation contains its own action, says a poet

I could call a frenemy if I wanted the truth to criss-

cross with politeness. Inside unclenching, clenching

my jaw. Teeth are exploding in record numbers now,

my dentist says. In my whole career, I’ve never seen anything

like it. We are always arriving at probabilities, stats,

which are not unmoonlike—something to point to if

our hands feel useless. Our own hands often feel useless.

We’re in one vast stress dream. For years in my sleep, gum

hardened in my mouth into taffy-superglue, bonded my

teeth together. I kept pulling out wads, shards. I’d never

get it all. It’s common for teens to dream they’re not in control

because they aren’t. Each negation contains its own action:

undreaming, unhurting. Can you feel your chin? I cannot,

but then this jolt of ragged, singed-nerve raw. Burn-

out is a noun now, plus a verb. I am trying to open my

mouth. Wider. Wider. We are waiting for my face to

wards? I’m lucky I’m unlikely to be pulled over. I’m

unnerved by danger, and the world is dangerous. Proceed

to the. Proceed to. I call the voice Little Lady as a joke

about sexism. It’s not usually funny: sexism. Clench.

Unclench my jaw. The journalist shows Powerpoints

of college-football rape headlines, pro-sports rape

headlines. Sports Illustrated waited to break the story

about assaults until after the swimsuit issue. Ask yourself,

she said, why that would be. There are bodies to move,

bodies to be moved. Balls in the air, so to speak. Lines

on the field. First down. Second down. I waited tables

for a year at a sports bar and never understood more

than football. Each negation contains its action: the men

kept playing on the field on the screen despite me,

like once an orthodontist stroked my hair and called me

beautiful as he talked about giving me nitrous. I bolted like

pain through a hot nerve. If you see the route in time,

you can proceed to the route. If aggression is hardwired,

it must have anastomosis—spreading out cattywampus,

cockeyed, skewed, etc. I can smell my nerves burning. But

now can’t feel them. Didn’t I want this? Still, I’m braced

for tripwires. When your mouth is on fire, it’s hard to open

wide enough to call out Wolf, Wolf! As a girl, I wanted to be

the girl in the movie, or was in love with the girl in the movie,

The Journey of Natty Gann. She’s run away to find her father

at a place called logging camp. It’s the Great Depression,

meaning economic, and other things. She’s androgynous,

scrappy, and would-be-raped except the wolf she’s adopted

(Wolf!) protects her. We’re lucky if our daemons find us, if

we climb the right boxcars. If the tracks go where we think

they will. The tracks often go where we think they will when

we wish they wouldn’t. It’s easy to predict the punchlines.

After Game of Thrones, everyone wanted a wolf. Now shelters

are full of huskies. Dreaming wilderness is not the same as

having to clean its paws. Burnout is a noun, a verb, a land-

scape. We’re wandering through it. Scientists are making real

synthetic dolphins. They’re indistinguishable in the Sea World

show. Look at the moon on their unskin. Isn’t it beautiful?

Most answers go with too many questions. We’re in the age of

the humane if you ignore the inhumanity, the wild-branching

monstrousness. Soon, someone will engineer teeth with no

nerves, so I can’t be miswired. I’ll open my perfect mouth.