Poem of the Week

I am my world. (The microcosm.)

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Hospitality: the first demand

what is your name?

the city bound me so I entered

to dream a science that would name me

daughter and launch beyond

grief, that old thoracic cause

myocardium: a blood-orange foundry

handed down by the humoral

anatomists and not be

inside my own head perpetually

not simply a Wittgenstein’s girl

but an infinite citizen in a shaking tent

If you are in need of an answer

consult a jiisakiiwinini

scientific rigour

psychoanalysis

the unconscious a construct

method amphibious

of two minds

that's the translator

her task to receive

the call that comes

down the barrel

of the future

all of us a congress

of selves a vibrational chorus

I know myself to be a guest

in your mind a grand lodge

of everything I long to know and hold

within this potlatch we call

the present

moment

If I speak of the night

speak its illicit cerebrum

of branches and back seats

speak beyond our future

a thinkable urn

my empirical training

my non-status brow ridge

indivisible and glistening

every time I tease a thread of being

from its moment in standard time

let's elevate the coordinates of distress

take it all in

I'm all in and over the limit

the limit, the eliminative, the lumens, the mens rea, the loom

to be a shopkeep in the showroom of nouns

what to purchase and what

to disavow

speak with saffron

speak of just the small bits, atomic

speak of the inevitable curve in the data

all foreclosed upon and glimmering

like a good bitch in the brine of night

I haven't nearly enough heat here

in this stakeout

the sky died and I'm its anima in the pitch thickets

I have fingers with which to squish

pin cherries and rosehips

dogwood, I have begun

to hear a rosary of pure tones, the colony

hear its call toward disorder

citizens, I have never

been dishonest in my horror

the underclass of our era

a requisite paternity test

dominus

in excelsis