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?