Sleeper’s Almanac

I was in the habit of error, a hand turning that knocks the glass, spills, incidental to meaning. Sleep that arrived intimate and inarticulate as a shadow. Shift of the shoulder-blades that brought the mind bearing down upon. I did not rest when I rested, thought, How long before varnish? How long before I stop dreaming only winter? Apotheosis in the garden of particulars: charmed lives of the vertebraed, mountains that looked mammalian, kudzu vines that moved like engines of memory. Wherever I went, I felt dwarfed. Path I’d swept with my hands but could not follow. What I learned to love is method: failures that clinked their warm weight as darkly as marbles when tucked in a pocket or turned in the mouth.

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Nor was I inured. Between gnash and truth, a void more felt than suffered, a void more felt than a breath pinned by tongue, by gash of mouth and gnarl of teeth. Held—held: tremolo. Are you more wing or man? More wing or flight? We bedded, strangeness next to strangeness, broken skin of a pear and scent of dirt under the thumbnail. From string to struck. We liked music of repetition, thrum of knuckle-on-wall that brouhahaed then slackened like weather-tremble—liked detail, weight of a head a hand an armon the chest. What to call it. Weight returned, turned catechism of glass and ice-rustle. What to call it. Began with tussle and fever, began with past-tense, with flung.

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If stung, if stumbling. The ground unpaved and hammered with ice. Sleep is a kind of logic, nooks and crannies, detail and item and point. I mean to be burnished and exacting, burning-glass poised to love with a fire’s attention. On the walls of the Brancacci Chapel, a mouth is a wound. Then, do I keel-heart? Touch fork to tongue and feel sentimental after the new fashion? If I stand shoulder-to-door and call stubbornness fortitude. If I was a tender of bricks and eaves and late hours when the railings shook held my breath listened for as long as I could.

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Do I mean wherewithal. At the park, I cannot stop apologizing to strangers. Like a pattern of fine cracks on the surface of a painting, sunlight shaking on the lake, sunlight shaken from it—a restless hand that wants to break itself. Some days even a single thing is beyond understanding. A whitecap where the gull resurfaces, a white flutter that I carry in my chest.

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—Of a pinch a tug. Fits of weather and wake up with a nosebleed. Eyes trained skyward. When I taste red, I check rules of grammar. Just as portended, I make mistakes, read faithful as fearful: fearful pet, fearful pet. Tineids in the closet unravel all night—the rapture of small animals, ad infinitum, ad absurdum. There are two types of objects: lucky and not. There are those who remain silent when they fear and those who do not. I make myself useful because I am afraid: marrying button and hook, arrangement and apotheosis, inflorescence of houseplants, and the forehead to be kissed.

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As firmament to fin, as lust to luster. My non-belonging. Pet-peeve, I joke with the woman cleaning after her dog. My spine practices its weathervane-twitch. Where some find delicacy: snowdrift, crocus, gold filament, a throat. I finger the loosened thread from the seam of my coat pocket until the key falls into the lining. What emotions do you associate with white? With bister? Boughs twist and rent with ice up and down the sides of our street. Winter hustling its shoulder and heft: salt lick, brine spring. When I said madstone, I meant heart, and when I said chest, I meant mine—it is not difficult to imagine the sea, the sweat-line pooled in the small of a back. Somewhere someone is washing her hands clean.

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May is on the mend. Begin with life, as in exhalation and supplication. My late house, my worry house. Under the anorectic splendor of trees, how long did I sleep on the narrow bed, tucking arm and haul. How long did I sit, waiting for the ground to conform to my shape. You slip your hands around my eyes to shut me within my own mind. What creature is undone by thought? Blackout: jaw-ache,

And where was I myself last. Where I kept myself.