“Right Livelihood” by Brent Armendinger
The word with comes from where I meant to
send the news
for you. The most important things – the red chair
I sit on floats
within the window. I walked outside in bare feet
to make it true.
I broke apart the name from an island, I did this
with you.
An unanswered letter, an apology, the clanging
forks and spoons.
We did it together. We called what we did Guantánamo.
Not with hands but with
our prepositions. We made it sink inside a cage,
we made it sink indefinitely.
The headline ate the handwriting. The bones got folded
on top of bones so
run your fingers along the seam – a map inside you.
A you inside you
drifts from blur back to particular. I saw you walk
along the empty rails.
Your kids weighing down your pockets with rocks.
At the library
you found out their geology and put them in order,
like misshapen books,
according to their first appearance on the earth.
Prepositions matter.
Even when they’re made on paper. A scream that’s only heard
on paper.
What did they do that happened or keeps on happening
to that woman
in the bathroom? My friend calls 911, an apology that never comes.
The police
may never come to help her, with her, for, about, beside her.
Maybe it happened
a long time ago, says my friend, pointing to her temple.
Or just now,
says my friend, opening her hands. Someone else’s long ago,
I mine too much
what is not mine, an unanswered letter, an apology.
You were telling me
after all that time it was good to sit beside him. It was painful.
It’s been six years
since I have seen you. When he died it was a piano that plays music
all by itself.
What ratio of news and light should a poem deliver? Like shadows
sewn together.
To be delivered like a ratio, a kind of precipitation. Somewhere
high above you
ice is also thawing, landing on a tongue that is not a tongue.
I thought
I could send your postcards back to you inside an envelope
of my words,
but I can’t, not yet. They are on my table and on their way
to you.
Copyright © 2009, Brent Armendinger
