vanish, something

would take a minute

to escape, a gradually

diminishing integrity,

a thinning pitcherful

of pitcher shape.

POST-CONSTRUCTION

Who knows better

than the builder

not to trust

a structure, where

it’s off kilter,

how too few

rafters bear

too much roof?

And still it

may stand, proof

against craft,

strong as though

ghost ribs

had been added

after one left.

CHART

There is a big

figure, your age,

crawling, then

standing, now

beginning to bend

as he crosses

the stage. Or

she. A blurred

and generalized

projection of you

and me. For a

long time it seems

as remote

from the self

as the ape chart

where they rise up

and walk into man.

And then it seems

the realer part.

NOTHING GETTING PAST

If life is a

thin film

sandwiched

between twin

immensities

of nothing,

you get the best

taste of this

out west in

the open country

where a keen

could mean the

double scrape

of nothing almost

touching nothing

or the wind

coming through

dry grass. In

either case it’s

pretty close

to nothing

getting past.

THE MATERIAL

The ratio between the material Cornell collected
and the material that ended up in his boxes
was probably a thousand to one.

—Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway

Whatever is done

leaves a hole in the

possible, a snip in

the gauze, a marble

and thimble missing

from the immaterial.

The laws are cruel

on this point. The

undone can’t be

patched or stretched.

The wounds last.

The bundles of

nothing that are

our gift at birth, the

lavish trains we

trail into our span

like vans of seamless

promise, like fresh

sheets in baskets,

are our stock. We

must extract parts

to do work. As

time passes, the

promise is tattered

like a battle flag

above a war we

hope mattered.

THE SELF IS NOT PORTABLE

The self is not

portable. It

cannot be packed.

It comes sneaking

back to any place

from which it’s

been extracted,

for it is nothing alone.

It is not an entity.

The ratio of self

to home: one part

in seventy.

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DRAWING ONESELF UP

One does not stack.

It would be like

a mouse on the back

of a mouse

on a mouse’s back.

Courses of mice,

layers of shivers

and whiskers,

a wobbling tower

mouse-wide,

with nothing more

than a mouse inside.

DUCK

It isn’t ever

all green thought

in green shade,

is it? When even

a duck pivots

beak-down in

pursuit of the

succulent options

that tuck and

cling among the

dangling roots of

an emerald dream,

parts stay so

independent they seem

foreign. With the

duck, for example,

the improbable

curl-peaked

eider island

that bobbles

above him.

LAST CHANCE

No more water

for 80 miles

or gas or

beer. If you

need some

get it here.

It’s just a gap

between stations,

a serviceless

hiatus—only

your last chance

in that sense—

really no more than

a glimpse.

NO NAMES