Censorship

Erasure of hair

makes a white space-

like a leech examining

a spine for its mouth.

To stop imagining

who blows cold air

into the woman's torso,

shiploading and rotting-

into the core of

this supplement

to the imagination and

this other supplement,

the censor of the imagination

who lives to see

with authority

what we make up for:

the fine cross-hairs

we keep bringing from the interior.

As flesh divides from the sea

its orchards, fields, mountaintops,

one of us becomes a

stain working through the ceiling.

Not murder as in Tess of the

d'Urbervilles but

nevertheless one of us is

moving through the ceiling,

an emulsion

spreading a commentary

on our shambles.

As if towels sopping

with blood were left

on the second floor.

The pillowcase under the man's head

could be hand-embroidered.

The pillowcase opens like a tube.

The rain has dithered down-

slanting across our eyes,

across the pillowcase and its embroidery.

We might notice the stitching

instead of the recreation of dying.

To not see:

it's not

a form of training

or a choice.

What are we good for?

What was done to our own

that we must watch?

-Lee Upton