Made to Resemble
a match is like a shard
the shard is like a sword
a sword is like a word
the house of water folds
the past is like a bowl
the future’s like a rope
a rake is like resemblance
don’t step on one oh no
mimesis is like mimesis
a tree is like a weed
a lie is like a fiction
a fiction’s like a deed
a shoe is like a shape note
an eye is like an island
the goose is like the gander
the sandman’s like the sand
a ribbon’s like a stipend
the bend is like the road
the cross is like a crisis
hope is like a bone
the season’s like a threshold
the forest is like a door
rats are like the righteous
the green are like the gold
life is like a sentence
a bird is like the world
reason is like erosion
names are like tin bells
to seek is to be looked for
to leap is like to fall
to think is to be distant
a soft spot’s like a blow
a river’s like a wellspring
the dead are like the soil
a chair is like a grandstand
the sky is like a dome
the sailor’s like the wave
the night is like the day
the bride is like the groom
the grain is like the wood
the end is like the beginning
the cut is like the blood
Things You Might Have Said
Things you might have said,
like “I love you” and “I’m sorry,”
wait for you ahead,
four-fingered like a ghost with digital lips
you can’t help kissing
in the dream you can’t stop having.
You are digital too,
and by design a woman.
Men bring you to their lips,
hold you, digital, in their arms.
You don’t desire them;
you symbolize their desire.
Like a character in a novel,
you are wired to seem.
Your lips and arms
are the very ache of seeming.
Never born, but much loved,
you go to bed absolved.
Digital snow falls on digital sheep
and on the field you dream.
A digital woman is designed to cry
when she becomes an actual woman
of dust and bone
and bears an actual baby
into the world’s pain.
The digital seasons pass.
You remain the dream
of an autumn too far.
You are held dear,
flicker but never age
in your digital living room.
The Windows (Speech-Lit Islands)
as if for the first time
you recognize the grass
its greenness uncanny
in trying to be green
as if for the first time
you open a letter
that had fallen
through the door
its message unique to you
had you been
as perhaps you seemed
the neighbor
the one whose name was yours
who finally joined the army
had you in fact a country
a life to give
wife and family
as if for a while
you could read the signs
remembered to unlearn
how the wind feels exactly
going up your spine
sensed the wheat sinking
into the ground nearby
the whiteness of milk
its mystical skirt uplifted
miss meat and miss gravy
as if the language
was smudged with words
speech-lit islands
that don’t submerge in meaning
as if light itself
was never in doubt
on the question
of transcendence
bees sing bells ring
in the ear’s black window
you whisper to the glass
its past in sand
step back please
a sentence is passing
someone’s calling
someone’s raining
door’s creaking contradictions
what bride is not disheveled
by all the world’s scissors
make-shape shiftings
been a long time
since you wrote yourself in stone
auto-lithographic
[I] seems to be alone
[I] suffers in a crowd
but not a yellow room
in not a yellow town
everyone’s on loan
but someone here knows
why nimble people cry
a bullet makes you die
and then there’s you
absent sometimes laughing
as if at last
there is no nonjourney
across the whole word
what are you thinking
conjured of a god
pears you’ll never taste
lines not written
what you know you are
you’ll never be again