More

than one, or two, or

enough that counting doesn’t help:

a million poppies, a million rats.

Even the former is frightening: anything

that suffocates. Once near Chang Mai,

under a waterfall: little silver fish

like teaspoons, at first a few and then

a dozen, then the school, the whirlwind,

the river a whisk of tarnish . . .

And the scale tips to shiver,

displacement of water for flesh, flashing

and slithering—

it softens the skin, makes the membrane

permeable. As if

they could have carried me off, under

the falls and into—what? Some pure

multiplicity. Soil, silt,

that close and constant air.