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of meeting there unthinkable.

      I’m wounded in a way that makes me think

       I can heal

      around the metal. You say no matter how

       much heavier than its size

       allows,

      it’s not enough. No

       matter the metal, it’s no more than the sound

       of sunlight and the taste of tin caught

       in a bright sheet of water thrown across the grass from a pail

      Like the shape of a scent, a voice with a bullet

       in its chords will never

       cover its shadow like lace

       thrown over the top of a mirror. As far

       as the mirrors go, you’re right.

      You hold one. I, the other,

       and light blows pieces

       of us thru the room. I watch you kiss

      the mask on my back. You wink a glow in a stainless

       eye and scent shadows splay across the wall.

      You’re in your full-length robe

       of precision

      and falling glass. I’m gone in blue light

       thru a broken window

       in your back, my limbs

      break the beam

       into spectrums of useless motion. The exit route

      took a piece of my third rib, you

       find the bone notch

       with a finger and say this wound’s our fifth

      nipple. It points away, rises always

       to reach where the heat of your voice comes from

       The snare rhythm of Method

      and Mary from a passing car, —foryourbodyandyourskintone

       the wrong vowel’s a pain net,

       a stress in a word can turn flock of knives.

       I gauze your face with my hands

       and every night we lost what we lost

      while you blink pours its wing-footed weight

       back over us.

       Eyes open, I see you seeing

      me here. You blink. Pigments collapse

       into a wound

      and lighten the skin around it. An orbit

       of surf against an atoll the weight of your name

       what we

      lost in my voice. The sound of that car rounds

       the corner, loops the block,

       you’re all, I need—lie

       together cry together—they’re police, you say, they love that song

       I push you back, away

      from the light into velvet shadows

       of the vestibule.

      Clouded liquids

       from a bowed sky bent like real trust

       move between our mouths.

       There’s always this

      always between us. This metallic click. Our bodies

       open and pressed against

       the cold steel

      of the front door, the El train’s tremor, blue

       flash, suspends us

       over deaths, we wonder how, were not our own.

       —after Raheem DeVaughn

       In 27 D the woman beside me on AirTran

      tells her year-old son in 27 E

       you wanna see daddy

      don’t touch that again A six-week-old

       daughter in her arm

       a cresent-shaped scar

       on her throat appears thru frayed-end braids

      she’s dipped in peroxide

       Over the scar

       a sleek-eyed tattoo with angular brows

      Under what the eyes know in

       cursive

       about where the tattooed eyes’ mouth

      would be and diagonal across the scar’s the word future

       I’m helping with the boy’s belt

       with one hand

       and trying my damnedest to get a no-look

      photo of the tatt with my phone

       We taxi : the boy’s got one

       earphone in his ear the other in his mouth

       she asks me could I turn

       the channel

      to “Urban Blast” and make sure he doesn’t touch the control

       —by the time we’ve got ourselves

      up above the seatbelt sign

       he’s out

      and the earphone escapes his open mouth

       the baby’s out too and the woman

       closes her eyes

      deep The future of what her throat knows

       stares at me thru the braids and she nods to the music

       her whole body nods baby’s sleep

      her head doesn’t move

       My right ear’s in the engine my left knows

       the song :

       suspended sentence pain handed down

       that’s the sound goes round

       and round

       —my brother’s in the ground

       bad-handed shuffle and a blank deck of fears

       eye to eye with a falsetto sky

       —women standing around broken

       together and staring back at you like a jury of your mirrors

       —for Jordan

       just short of a month ago I burned a first edition

      on the hearth

       and scooped the blistered ash don’t ask

      into an airtight container I keep it next to the sugar

       sun up I stir a teaspoon of this shade and heavy cream

      into coffee and there’s breath clean

       as knife-wind in the brain blown down

      the full length of the lake whipped

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