Allegiance

or, Light and Very Small Things

I suppose I’ll have to read you after all

I’ll have to suspend my belief

(now’s when all those things our former lovers said about us—

now’s when we can say them about each other)

oh, darkness, begin again

begin to torment me properly

I suppose I’ll have to pledge

I’ll have to consider the average size of the new American house

I’ll have to answer you someday and I’ll have to find some excuse

            I mean explanation

I suppose the flag—though it is still not illegal to burn—

I suppose the flag, like the rest of us, would like to win

the “cerveza” prize for literature

            among other things

other things it stands for (other things

it can’t stand)

because it can’t stand on its own

it is just not enough anymore to have been somewhere

to have seen something, to have tasted, have barked, have spit out

it is not enough it is

indivisible?

divisive?

crosswise/invisible

and yet it has to stand

it has to stand for something

Talking Back and Through

No, all things

            are not possible, just as

All things are not impossible.

For instance:  I cannot un-love you.

For instance: the bad guy

never sleeps, and never

tires and in so doing becomes

the good guy.

Neither badness or goodness are possible.

I don’t think much

            of this descriptive world or of

   its discrete ingredients except as they become

us. Meat, that is, or if you prefer

            flesh

(Hamlet’s slings and arrows notwithstanding).

All things notwithstanding, for instance:

the clumsiness of truth (I cannot

            unlove), a spareness

I lack.

The softening of the edge is yellow light, violins.

But I do not want softening. Nor do I want

this unachievable starkness. But I do want

            to know what’s in the corner.

Everyone’s lining up to see what’s gone wrong.

Or just what’s gone. I skim the headlines I guess

I can just touch the surface before

(my shadow exaggerates/but then

           

my shadow                          exaggerates

but then there is the vague memory of a suspension bridge

            the tenuousness

now I can point to something concrete that may contain

(a shape a suddenness)   the outline of “what happened”

where each bridge is a possibility and each possibility

            is another bridge                   to

hunger is only semi-

            transparent these fabrications

vaguely wrap   around   you

(they are white)

things I need to point at but they are wrapped around me

oh shit—who was I

            supposed to hate again?

a person created

(monogamy was invented

when we didn’t live so long and when we

lied differently)

a person created by a literary or musical work: a word in the hand

is worth : get to the point or be pointed at

my shadow exaggerates

while the dog’s shadow looks like a dog which I prefer

to the shadow of a hand pretending to be a dog to the shadow of a dog

pretending to be a hand

To/At/Of/From

some random gorgeousness prosaic – the indentation

of other furniture has not yet subsided the echo

lacks authority; I do not doubt

what it is I smell but I doubt its significance

I doubt its lack of speed and its repetition

I doubt the indentation it has not finished making

yet I don’t let go

I find things to fill this space, I tell

the same story over and over and over again, and this is sung, rolling

over and over

like a lawnmower or a cement truck

(seeing is )

Seeing is pretending

And oh, you shouldn’t have told me

myriads of myriads of

really

you should not have told me these things because I will remember them

forever

We (we are)

We

are always staying and we are always leaving

and we have just left always

before we arrived, before we even—

            the things I've hidden have since been covered, uncovered

            the focal point shifts

you drive by and I recognize not you but your license plate

since I have imagined this scene so many times the real event

is a poor imitation

            the things I've hidden have been fallen upon

            the center shifts

            the things I have been here will stay here, covered

we are always leaving and we are always staying

because we have always just left

because we have always just arrived, just

            upon arrival possibility

            prevails

            and this instant hangs,

            misremembered in perpetuity

            clung to

            as if the awkwardness could be erased