Visiting Hours at the Color Line. Ed Pavlic
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of meeting there unthinkable.
I’m wounded in a way that makes me think
I can heal
around the metal. You say no matter how
much heavier than its size
allows,
it’s not enough. No
matter the metal, it’s no more than the sound
of sunlight and the taste of tin caught
in a bright sheet of water thrown across the grass from a pail
Like the shape of a scent, a voice with a bullet
in its chords will never
cover its shadow like lace
thrown over the top of a mirror. As far
as the mirrors go, you’re right.
You hold one. I, the other,
and light blows pieces
of us thru the room. I watch you kiss
the mask on my back. You wink a glow in a stainless
eye and scent shadows splay across the wall.
You’re in your full-length robe
of precision
and falling glass. I’m gone in blue light
thru a broken window
in your back, my limbs
break the beam
into spectrums of useless motion. The exit route
took a piece of my third rib, you
find the bone notch
with a finger and say this wound’s our fifth
nipple. It points away, rises always
to reach where the heat of your voice comes from
The snare rhythm of Method
and Mary from a passing car, —foryourbodyandyourskintone
the wrong vowel’s a pain net,
a stress in a word can turn flock of knives.
I gauze your face with my hands
and every night we lost what we lost
while you blink pours its wing-footed weight
back over us.
Eyes open, I see you seeing
me here. You blink. Pigments collapse
into a wound
and lighten the skin around it. An orbit
of surf against an atoll the weight of your name
what we
lost in my voice. The sound of that car rounds
the corner, loops the block,
you’re all, I need—lie
together cry together—they’re police, you say, they love that song
I push you back, away
from the light into velvet shadows
of the vestibule.
Clouded liquids
from a bowed sky bent like real trust
move between our mouths.
There’s always this
always between us. This metallic click. Our bodies
open and pressed against
the cold steel
of the front door, the El train’s tremor, blue
flash, suspends us
over deaths, we wonder how, were not our own.
Flight 577 : Atlanta to Chicago : Seat 27 F
—after Raheem DeVaughn
In 27 D the woman beside me on AirTran
tells her year-old son in 27 E
you wanna see daddy
don’t touch that again A six-week-old
daughter in her arm
a cresent-shaped scar
on her throat appears thru frayed-end braids
she’s dipped in peroxide
Over the scar
a sleek-eyed tattoo with angular brows
Under what the eyes know in
cursive
about where the tattooed eyes’ mouth
would be and diagonal across the scar’s the word future
I’m helping with the boy’s belt
with one hand
and trying my damnedest to get a no-look
photo of the tatt with my phone
We taxi : the boy’s got one
earphone in his ear the other in his mouth
she asks me could I turn
the channel
to “Urban Blast” and make sure he doesn’t touch the control
—by the time we’ve got ourselves
up above the seatbelt sign
he’s out
and the earphone escapes his open mouth
the baby’s out too and the woman
closes her eyes
deep The future of what her throat knows
stares at me thru the braids and she nods to the music
her whole body nods baby’s sleep
her head doesn’t move
My right ear’s in the engine my left knows
the song :
suspended sentence pain handed down
that’s the sound goes round
and round
—my brother’s in the ground
bad-handed shuffle and a blank deck of fears
eye to eye with a falsetto sky
—women standing around broken
together and staring back at you like a jury of your mirrors
Waking Up in Chicago after Dream Song 29
—for Jordan
just short of a month ago I burned a first edition
on the hearth
and scooped the blistered ash don’t ask
into an airtight container I keep it next to the sugar
sun up I stir a teaspoon of this shade and heavy cream
into coffee and there’s breath clean
as knife-wind in the brain blown down
the full length of the lake whipped