SITTING UPRIGHT, BEING PRODUCTIVE ...
SITTING UPRIGHT, BEING PRODUCTIVE
Hills flatten out. Trees retreat down
to rubble, then fine powder be-speckled
by disintegrated home-appliances
trailed off in the long breeze on
its long legs in high wool socks.
Scuffed boots quiet and steady-
coming up some long way from
the horizon’s distant arc.
You are, in an instant, alone.
Sitting upon a straight-backed chair looking
west with hands to your side, fingers hooked
into the sun. From the vanishing point
clouds describe parallel lines to you.
In all directions falls earth in perpetuity.
Your nose is plugged with bees and their buzzing.
You open your mouth to breathe
and to give your teeth an excuse
for falling out each in turn
beginning from your left on top,
1,2,3,4 to drop, so white and
so round in their polish,
pigeon eggs smiling
at their straight descent towards
and dry smack upon
this our long empty arc
being blown by wind
and to be blown by the wind
or our children’s bright future.
Don’t move. You are alone.
Let your eyes follow the roll
of your former teeth. Allow
your eyes their slip up and down
in the hollows of their obits.
Listen for the slosh of fatty tissue.
Forget your once-teeth. You are alone.
They’ve long since rolled out of reach.
Now, lift palm-heels to brow-ridge.
Push. Push and feel. Push and know
each bulbous bone spavin
accumulating under eyebrows’ curve.
Push. You are alone.
Recognize the striation.
Lines, whorls, calluses, dirt.
Dead skin against eyelid’s thinness.
Push. Push and savor pressure transferred
through palm heel, through eyelid,
through vitreous humor. Push.
There is only you, the straight-backed chair,
your nose full of bees, and the earth’s curvature.
You don’t even have teeth for company. Push.
posted by Curtis Jensen @ 04:02
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