In Accelerated Silence by Brooke Matson (best ereader manga TXT) 📕

recall the years

before we met. How satisfying to split

the discs against patio concrete, to abandon

carloads of furnishings at Goodwill

and imagine my grief tucked in the bags.

Strong emotions cause her to change color

the biologist explains as she transfigures

into a knot of red caught on a twig,

a deflated balloon in a breeze. An octopus

is smarter than a house cat. Her eye

flicks in my direction, every cell hinged

on listening. No exoskeleton means vulnerability.

I press a hand to the glass and her ruddy skin

peppers with white the way my neck

felt like rain each time you grazed it. She heaves

her body over her quarry like a paper lantern

set over a flame. If I could have plucked you

like a mussel from your shell

I would have swallowed you whole.

III

EVE’S APPLE

Became soft, browned flesh—eucharist

dissolved on a tongue where it

Dropped

Bruised among the leaves.

Gnawed by badgers.

Drunk by moths.

Succumbed to hordes of ants ascending in the night.

Filed to a spire of seeds, the rind bending

toward the field.

Illuminated under the crescent moon,

a slender skull

with five narrow eyes.

Tempted away from shape—

Leaned toward sugar, toward myth.

Imprinted on the field, an indented

cup of scent—the urgent press

of her question.

LAW OF INERTIA

A pair of sandals suspended near the front door, the same that walked beside him on the shore, their gold straps worn to grey. Call them artifacts of a woman who died. I’ve left my body far behind since the funeral. Their haphazard stance spells tragedy, waiting for hands to arrive that might cradle them like relics—reverent and ridiculous as this woman here, unable to bury the year-old bag of rice in the garbage pail because his thick fingers once pressed the seal, or to sell the couch where our shoulders and thighs etched the polyester-linen blend. How comfortable we both declared the cushions and how holy it seems now—the padded springs still insist on his shape.

IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

It is impossible to spontaneously create quark from vacuum, but yet it happens all the time.

—DR. MACIEJ LEWICKI

There is an 83.2% probability

webs of mycelium have eaten

your nerve endings

and detritus curls like leaves

in the nest of your aorta. You lie

beside your father, twenty years

and two feet of earth

between. Mary comes every Sunday

to lay flowers and say three words for me.

There is an 11.4% probability

you sit beside your father

outside the dimension of time. He taps

a pipe on his bottom teeth,

takes a pull. Galaxies emerge

from his exhale. Black holes hover

about his head, the bold scent

of tobacco. What is the nature of darkness?

Am I unborn? The words form

but cannot escape before

he opens a book. Thin sheets of scripture

fan in frothy waves of the sea, whales

cascading between his fingers. He grins

and you fall in, your sea-grey

eyes open wide.

There is a 3.6% probability

your body escaped by train, a torn

one-way ticket in your breast pocket.

The carriage rocks

back and forth, bullets over the gold-

green tapestry of countryside at the speed

of light. Your godmother

uses the tip of her finger to mark

your brow with vermilion

as if something entered there. As if

something escaped. You turn

to steam as the train leans

on a curve, leans

into sweetgrass, jasmine,

colors that vanish as you think their names.

There is a 1.79% probability

your blood has given birth to begonias

everywhere it fell: in the woods where you scraped

your knee as a boy, behind the football field

where your mouth tasted his knuckles,

along the dock where ropes cut lines

in your palms. Red lips

chew their way through loam.

They open. They have things to say.

There is a 0.01% probability

you are a great blue whale in the Pacific

culling a seam of morning krill.

You swallow a barrelful, pulse

your larynx like a drum,

surge skyward.

Near the coast of Washington,

a woman wakes, cold

in a strange bed, thinking

she heard your voice.

ELECTRON CLOUD

You tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry.

—ALBERT CAMUS

You could be anywhere—

after all, the hummingbird’s wings

flutter so fast only

a flute of emerald

hovers among the trumpet vines

Even the waspish leaves

hum

like tuning forks

All matter orbits what it adores

*

Think of the blades of a fan—

how they cease

to be blades

and where they escaped

a ring

*

Your palm presses

between my breasts as I unbend

from sleep my blood

begs like ravens

but the bedroom I wake to is empty—

no—

filled with light but the point is

you were here you

could be anywhere

*

Some days I pause by the rotary phone

to spin the letters of your name

winding back time

in the hum and clack

of the wheel—reeling you in

letter

by letter

Never mind

that it’s not plugged in

I swear to god some days

I hear a crackling on the other end

like the time you called from the hospital

still unable to speak

I stood barefoot on the linoleum

listening to you breathe

even then

I believed

CENTRIFUGAL FORCE

I wait for the fabric

to break—

for a hole to yawn

through the skin—

but paper-thin it spins

and spins the chef’s

hardened hands

have tossed this dough

for years the disc

flutters above

and around him

a Dalí clock falling

and rising with every brush

of his knuckles let no one tell you

grief is a stone

it is supple a plane

beyond moan

stretched past the edge

of the known—

ORIONID METEOR

What you call a shower,

I call fire. I’ve come

this close—

ice and dust and desire

serrated against your cornea.

Friction is a terrible thing.

Trying to touch your face is like singing

as you’re burned at the stake—

a colorful prayer

of conversion—

a flaying

just to glimpse your back.

Your catatonic blue. God-iris

almost in focus. A cold ocean to slake

my incinerating question.

ELEGY IN THE FORM OF ENDANGERED SPECIES

We believe in the seen and unseen—

in blue whales beneath the Strait of Juan de Fuca

gliding like cellos

through silver arteries of salmon

I believed the motel owner who told

of whitecapped waves and a cliff

whales lifting their weight

from water

and before that a forest

with strange forms of animal

shades of wing

skins I’d never seen

I’ve come looking for proof

of what I cannot touch your body

for instance

I felt it next to me

last night in that strange bed rolled

onto your shoulder

wishful

and necessary thinking

But the rainforest I tread this morning

is thick with silence—

sunlight muted by spruce

Evidence found thus far:

stained glass of gossamer

sans spider

hovel of a rubber boa but not the slash

of its sentence

At last

after the slick boards of a bridge

I stand on the wingtip

of the map scanning the bright

horizon

Spouts rise like smoke

but not the dull blade

of the body—what I crave

Whales

I declare to the man

who has