Visiting Hours at the Color Line. Ed Pavlic
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its hook-fingered rebar
spine reinforced pearls condense
in the tight and curled-down sky parts of me
in the hair of his forearm the lake’s black & pitched on us
in sheets that catch the flame of the city
in the air as for air there’s just enough
for now the doors of the car frozen shut and it’s him it’s not him it’s
the taste of his voice in my mouth it’s not my mouth
we talk every day which is never today
til there’s nothing to say til no ache polices his veins
til nothing ever ached like my mouth which is not my mouth
for his as for now as if it was now and so ever would
the battery’s been dead quiet storm gone
and we’re tangled around each other for warmth
the past’s nothing if not the irregular pulse of his lap
in my ear and that cop saunters and wags
and pisses on the car and thank christ leaves us to freeze
before we can’t breathe or just breathe
before we can’t freeze either way it was all there and now it’s not
go ahead : take the dice and let them kick up on the curb
you can walk away before they’re still
if you want but don’t tell me there’s no number
on the ground don’t say the last breath can’t be the last
and after that it’s not breath just don’t ok
til you’ve kicked the rear window out & let night be this night
and splash to life all on your face which is this face
that sounds that sound that sounds like that sound
like my hands that ache beneath this ice as for friends and this ice
and love and Berryman : two out of three (so pick three)
will tell you what to do with rebar and wind in your mouth
and buildings that fall like needles thru your eyes : get
the frozen flame in your belly and hipbones
cross to the wrong side of the rail gone raw and wave goodbye
to what sounds that sound
and yes every weekend Ric’s grandmamma Ms. Lou
handed us her keys to Chicago and told us : remember baby,
every good-bye ain’t gone so you look it’s not like I haven’t
I’ve shut my eye and dreamed thru
keyholes and I’ll be damned if she ain’t gone on and gone missing
too
I put it to bubbleboy and he popped,
left a perfect semiswirl of razormist where invisible
sun used to be. I put same to circleboy,
you guessed it, snap addict,
flat line. I approached Suci while she memorized
the Presidents. Both pointer fingers up,
eyes closed, she said wait, I love this
one, Millard Fillmore. I’ll admit if put on the spot
I don’t always know if the past
tense of swing is swung or swang
but I know I don’t mean
either one. I mean cause it won’t go away.
I feel dizzy when I think
a pendulum in orbit is always plumb.
I dissolve when I ask Mzée anything
because he doesn’t know
where I begin or end. He looks up at me
from the floor, da da ca po—
When put to, chlorine spill pled triflouride
and moved toward me
in such a way that said, you don’t want to know.
Said, you don’t even want to breathe.
I’ll say I don’t know if the past
tense of put is pat or pit. But I know perfectly
well that there’s no past
tense of put. When I pit or patted it to whole add sugar
packet of Kool-Aid in the mouth girl, she spilled
out a mile of something too bright to be
looked at. Smiled. Gum line a blaze-coast.
I knew better than to ask Milan anyway,
cause he can feel everything
ready to shift, and so I know he’ll lie
which isn’t a lie so much
as a prediction of and against the impossible
odds. If I pit it
to him and he did, I know I’d tell him he lied
when I know I’d have told Suci something
different if the same had happened
between us. Before I got my lips together and breath
back of that for the first part of p
Stacey turned around and told me (she may
have told me then turned around)
in no uncertain terms albeit wordlessly
she was “too busy with the present
tense of her hips and The History of Soul Train
on PBS”—so you know what month it is—said
“half the stuff in your head at any moment
for instance” and back still (or again) to me touches her right
index finger one by one to the tips of each
of her four left hand fingers and a thumb
“unions, real schools, and us, and”—waving at the room—“this
and”—waving at the kids—“them” and starting over
on the tips of her left-hand fingers “and February
and did I say us
are probably illegal in the state of Georgia
with or without The History of Soul
Train on PBS and that pistol in the transcendental
drawer that is legal but I can’t exactly say that
can I about most of what I feel
like doing when I hold it in my hand” and my vision went