Some days, the sky descends to the level of mid-thigh water
the clock-hands come loose, and language is a skiff
over land through the rhythm of your breathing, girl
then I can hear the pink oriole, the body is a metronome
of blood and syllables beating placentas of speech
and news tingles like a caress of words still to be spoken:
umbrellas, bracelets, sleepers in doorways, police and victim—
I wind these objects to strike my human self dead
so as to taste the massy hive, the bloom and sounds
following my spending to gather up the pennies, kisses
meant for you, lost in transit, I follow my own kisses
to rooms in European cities, to the bottom of a shot glass
like a piece of economy flung about the streets
I spit pronouns, you fall from my lips, bewildered
I fall to the tracks, a suicide, a trembling drunk at Du Pont
and this day is a book left ajar, next to the rain.