each morning she tries to clear the bear tracks
from her eyes. each optometrist believes her
corneas are a forest reality crashes through
blindly, even though they all suffer from owl
ring, which goes undiagnosed two point five out
of three cases per annum. trust a professional to catch
the mouse tail creasing your earlobe – hear
the soft wings of night three seconds before
your friends? the troubled sigh of fog ere
your mother-in-law? – and she’s liable
to contract its phantom form. this, I think,
is what a confused accountant meant when
he talked about the “tension of improvised
reality” while watching unshowered people
try to scour their country of corruption
at a park in New York that refused the simple
sung-triptych of running water: a diagnosis
can haunt itself, especially when ad-libbed.
stork bites beneath my sister’s hair can be
salmon patches, angel kisses. the rough patch
on your elbow can be paver’s revenge, Vulcan’s
caress, but you didn’t get it from me. the quirks
of your body are not yours though your body
is, unless you’re pregnant in the middle of something,
and how pretty is that? as gorgeous as the heron
nubs on your scapulae – aka masseuse’s night-
mare – or the mercurial knobs of your ankles:
evidence, like the gills we bequeathed to wombs
to leave them, the body thought it could move
in any essence, until our names anchored it to one.