On The Color Washing Out The Edges

You’re arrowing out toward what.

The sunlight almost unfaceable, and weightless,

and the gravities, wind-flickers, shadows, the ripped

black places crows make on the phone poles—

how to keep your own counsel,

even against the little stabs, the winds and chromes—

•

Various flashes, the office door, a supper glass, a last

smear of streetlight on the bedsheets.

Nothing. On into the soaring, black release.

•

The messages say syllabus and vetting that

and will be absent. Nothing.

On into the what? the air you’re gliding on

or falling from,

the wind of it making

ahs and salves in the hollow of your chest,

Celina of a bodily sibilance like willows,

of the shimmering, midsummer glance.

You would allow yourself a message.

How to make it low-key. How to keep it to a few lines.

•

On into the wind of whatever is happening.

What leashes you seems to have come undone.

You lean down into the white heap of black words.

You pad out toward the water fountain

into someone’s eyeshadowed look, the lush backwash of her skirt.

You weigh maybe three or four

ounces, swirling down the stairwell

in whichever wind this is, your ribs

aching with what they

sing so shamelessly.