In Defense of Nothing. Peter Gizzi

      shadow splits and divides on either side

      of a pelvic blade. Unity in strict notation.

      Dear ghost. Dear reader. I have seen you.

      And this at least is one definition, I include,

      to become, who I call, myself. A remembrance

      got on autumn footpath scurrying on our way

      to life. So now when I line up and belong

      to persons next to me, I’ll be good

      and eat my soup. But I’m sick.

      It’s getting harder to say now, this

      exploded present, doubling back moebius

      style on your gaze and the air thick

      thick with tongues. You’ll say it’s too discursive.

      But I have learned more from chicken soup

      than all the bright contests. So praise

      the retarded man serving me coffee

      at the meeting, he has a place. Bless him.

      And you think I’m kidding.

      What did you do today for someone? Or rather

      what have I done to sit here. Call me Dismal.

      I wake up a thousand times a day. And ask

      three questions. Are you shy are you lost

      are you blue? Is there nothing left for you?

      Only on holiday or for one holiday only?

      From boneyard to schoolyard. All the good

      it does you now. Waiting in a parking lot.

      O pioneer your keel has run aground,

      your stars have betrayed you.

      There is no instruction for this light,

      no room bigger than a lung. Who can say

      in common speech what the crowds were cheering for.

      Rushing in at the edges of the map

      lamenting the end of the forest. Open the theater,

      place the ring inside. A curtain of birds

      and fish. A curtain of trees and hills

      and vistas. Now bring about words to heal.

      Sentences to bring about change. Grammar

      that shall inhibit evil? Now: clap hands.

      Father tell me what you think

      of me. Is it a face or a factory? Come here

      to distinguish the burden of a smile. Attached

      to lightning. As the world was revealed then returned

      to your sandwich. I am who sent me.

      Obvious and otherwise a trope was. This laundry

      line strung from year to year reaches

      to the woman I am becoming. Always leads to my fear.

      The difficulties of ambiguity. Or your smile

      chosen. A vehicle that allows no passage beyond,

      but the surface is bright. You’re wrong about clarity,

      blue inescapable blue. Not a red sky at night.

      What delight can I afford? Though

      this might be leading nowhere. This is

      a composite map leading me to the horizon

      of afternoon, where the you is not erased

      or blown away but remains coal ash intact

      at the bottom of my mouth. A music

      to enhance our margin plotting to broaden

      this plain. My field of reference larger than.

      To unfold stillness, and giving time time,

      I learned to trust the history of my own backyard.

      To this day I don’t read newspapers.

      After all the sun we had. At twilight a salamander

      will appear in the core of the reactor.

      The day I gave my wedding dress away.

      FROM

       ARTIFICIAL HEART

      NEW PICNIC TIME

      Unless the giddy heaven fall —ANDREW MARVELL

      1.

      Out of this close horizon there are animals

      breathing unlike a child’s drawing of a nativity.

      Orbiting circles with brown x’s. Farther off

      pedestrians make parallel lines and collapse

      into distance. Or becoming one of several skylines

      in charcoal or finger-paint.

      2.

      At zero hour an earth unwrites itself.

      Becomes an indelible number line

      counting backward to embrace its new horizon,

      indefatigable zero. The high lit window.

      A person tethered to a desk. This city and its outline

      its rivers, its cemeteries.

      3.

      Invisible, the orchard keeper’s mansion

      is everywhere. The heart becomes one, last stone

      of an existing grove and a squatter’s earth.

      Thus in persons and in plants also stone.

      And the brilliant element of fire and to the helix

      and throughout the electrics: salt.

      4.

      Beyond this image decomposing: desire. And as always

      with the mouth there is earth. Because it calls, fear is redundant.

      And that animal sound in late night is only its own. Speech

      becoming one, becoming air, books outlasting buildings

      outlast sweat and the broken human form a body labors.

      Whose face is the same as another?

      5.

      Nothing spoke for itself. Every action implied a rhetoric

      so it may recognize itself. To teach, to celebrate virtue,

      to persuade by example, to lead the court to its ideal self

      through wonder. Same page same fable trajectory. A window.

      The young father dreaming. A hand a face a feeling.

      It was a sound he heard.

      6.

      The way of earthworms and coffins of dead infants,

      cobwebs and deformity, of windows and the children