Hands of Adam Kadmon Before the Pick,
image by Daniel Y. Harris
from
To Myself, You Listen
Logic
Why you
lament
this mis
-ery is
why you
misspell your name
into
the mouth
pressing sin
into the fork
-ing of
your unblemished
tongue.
Equivalents
Why the
sea whispers
you
wear the answer
in the
slight rise of your
shadow. Dust
does
this: erases clarity:
another
form: of whisper.
Here,
you recall the body
that
left markings, a
living
bruise, 1920’s blues.
You
sing halos, —you
talk of
prayer while
removing
scratched faith
from
your knees’
contagious
swelling.
Eventual
Under
your foot,
a
bouquet of prior names.
Rename
them:
near-skin
importance,
soft
verbs remove violence
in the
way your hand
ceases
grasp
when
death unpeels
the
mirror’s final
articulation.
Song to the Self
When
young you
would
bruise to escape
the
clarity of
comfortable
skin. Your
mother
would
reject
her tongue
to
remove evidence
of
questioning why. This
did not
disturb you:
your
face provided
erased
prose to unfasten
meaning
of the
escalated pain
drawing
your
eyes
the color of
evaporating
crows.
Spiritual
You
partition these voices traveling circles in your mouth. Record them.
Hold
the one hallowed whisper nearest to your chest.
Breathe well.
The
screams, you bury into flame. Believe in the father’s spectrum
of
size. When leaving he is largest. Pain to augment the size of
your
disappearing safety. The city in you
burns. The bodies gray
into
apparitional hours. You watch to
recognize past. The silence
recognizes
you. The voices are perishing—the mouth
tumbling
into
mistaken company.
