I don’t know how I found you—like
red dots spread across lines, pages
before I noticed I
read them as if I read them—like when turns
of plot arise
in shows I watch
while thinking how I thought them there—
as in this passage here—now dear—
come to where this paragraph goes
to imagine your name
like your signature—I found you—your style
in these spots—red
dots move across
the lines with what you are saying—
and I may have caught an error,
but what gets fixed with “cinch” too close
to “clinch” in article
on Israel—as with rain, its coming
down pattering
on how it used
to sound too much the exact thing,
like same—is your fact—is your fact
back here—it’s disappearing, dear—
I found you still in one
direction, and not yet gone to what we
hear in the rain,
still in its same
fact—you are approaching, brother—
that’s the rain becoming patterned
as exactly mine patterning
yours—is that the point to find
you may be what I know slips close closer—
there’s more to hear—
or better throw
it in reverse across the lawn
whose house—that sound—a garbage can
crushed by the way—you seem to know
the route but not the turns—
now dear, before we get this picture of
you again—how
you hate not to
be perfect is less sometimes with
someone there to see you hate it—
it must be lovely to be like
hair—to have precision
so render your value apparent to
yourself—but can
you read with red
ants across the page—you write of
the self thinking of ways in which
to appear the self able to
determine the moment
you traded the feeling of being watched
for noticing
you were watching—
you write this like a witness to
an accident, considering
your account more and more closely
until the belief that
memory itself is time, itself is
that kind of light
everywhere,
no, none here, then another like
hair you think you finished sweeping—
I said “brother” in the middle
of the paragraph with
two sweaty trash bags—one crawling with ants—
a story you
tell about how
you split with thinking where it caught
you here—years before—a park bench,
willing to engage in chatter,
considerate, pleasant,
but by most accounts this conversation
does not exist,
not for all these
people on the sidewalk, nor those
possibilities of its width
that were left to you sent forward
by believing you went
faster sent to the ground, broke your own tea
bottle—no one
helped as you came
toward where need was confused for
violence—like when the subway doors
shut on a woman with a box,
the man kicked the wall, said
“they doing it on purpose”—dear, notice:
first a branch moved,
then several,
a bird coming forward onto
the sidewalk where it meets the walls,
the building—uphill—the building
continued to the store,
which was larger than thought, extending round
corner—voices—
the tomatoes—
behind them there is space for what—
Uruguay turning another
you in sheets of mountain aerie—
resting on the edge of
I have no time for anyone who’d need
the person next
to them, before
deciding they’d fit perfectly
behind the phrase, “now close the door”—
you were late, which made the crowds more
difficult, the same as
if you had nothing to do, but listen:
the farther store,
the street empty,
again—I turned, you knocked into
how far off—was it me moving
the crowd—have you ever
noticed it’s possible
to forget birds for weeks, concerned with your
own behavior—
had nothing to
do with everything else—but
how bright the light, what you made that—
the tomatoes you ate baked spoon
inside each, warmer than
voices you expected further into
what you couldn’t
see—that night you
write of where rain is as white light
over red dots, revealing they aren’t—
aren’t they—simpler as splatter from
the tomatoes on your
apparitions—come in, that’s a coat rack,
speak, that’s a light
switch it loose like
things are supposed to come apart—
or and again—with whom begin—
who’s there holding himself like he’s
no better than here—like
here’s a means by which anyone claims to
exist—yes, yes,
that one, who seems
as if he hasn’t been told yet
there’s a selection—is that what
he traces in his pocket—no,
only lining—ask him—
what do we call him—brother—hey brother
is the lining good here—listen,
cinch means clinch, a sound that’s dear to—
I don’t know how I found you—like
there was a fix in on the fix—
no, that was not hinted,
that door at your touch was enough thesis—
remember you
don’t remember
how to play—that’s preparation—
like thawing a whole in pieces—
like waterboarding or frozen
elevation—like change
long dead from lack of change or oxygen—
are you thirsty
now, dear—I’ve had
you unjustly, you feel the time
like time breaking, acting as if
asking for just three square instants
is to ask everything—
you haven’t even thought that far in far
too long—brother,
it’s not who asks
the questions, but that you make your
answer easy—brother, as if
you’re at home—no knock at the door
could disturb you, for who
belongs more in his place than you—a night
like wind—into
the rain—without
you, could this comfort remember—
brother, when it turns actual
is what you mean less possible—
the rain is it itself,
or how exact it falls like grammar—kid,
you never learn
patterns partly—
when you can say it you tell me—
a limit always remembers—
the next thing you know it’s hard to
be after what you were
here for—let’s have it—you leave them, brother—
it’s just the wind
leaving the hall,
you can shut the windows later—