Visiting Hours at the Color Line. Ed Pavlic

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СКАЧАТЬ Chile, the S-curve,

       northbound

       lane, South Shore Drive.

      The scent between us sheds its skin,

       its song floods the basement

       of my eye. I see it swirl up

       the heel-scuffed steps. You blink and it takes the light

       Every glimpse of you is a gift, flesh-flash

       in deathchance that blew itself

      out. Straight thru me. This scent

       from your breast

       stalks itself thru the long odds

      of my body. I’m alive. You

      blink and I die. Blind tip. Your tongue can’t see

       the hard-domed

       entry wound high on my shoulder.

       The one below, you say, looks

      like it’s sleep

       with a half-open eye. One

      bullet’s still inside me. Dead metal

       in my voice. You say that dead metal

       when I say it,

       you hold the metal in your name

      like the bullet’s in your mouth, too heavy for its size

       You blink and draw back

      like you’ve heard a two-by-four crack.

       You say, for you,

       it’s a red-light boy with his hood up die bitch

      you saw the kick push back his sleeve.

      His gun, jammed, is always there. Deaf click of an open O

       in your eye. You blink again, slow and long,

       always and I stay dead

       for ten seconds. Eyes closed,

      you say the imagination’s infinite, the chance

       of meeting there unthinkable.

      I’m wounded in a way that makes me think

       I can heal

      around the metal. You say no matter how

       much heavier than its size

       allows,

      it’s not enough. No

       matter the metal, it’s no more than the sound

       of sunlight and the taste of tin caught

       in a bright sheet of water thrown across the grass from a pail

      Like the shape of a scent, a voice with a bullet

       in its chords will never

       cover its shadow like lace

       thrown over the top of a mirror. As far

       as the mirrors go, you’re right.

      You hold one. I, the other,

       and light blows pieces

       of us thru the room. I watch you kiss

      the mask on my back. You wink a glow in a stainless

       eye and scent shadows splay across the wall.

      You’re in your full-length robe

       of precision

      and falling glass. I’m gone in blue light

       thru a broken window

       in your back, my limbs

      break the beam

       into spectrums of useless motion. The exit route

      took a piece of my third rib, you

       find the bone notch

       with a finger and say this wound’s our fifth

      nipple. It points away, rises always

       to reach where the heat of your voice comes from

       The snare rhythm of Method

      and Mary from a passing car, —foryourbodyandyourskintone

       the wrong vowel’s a pain net,

       a stress in a word can turn flock of knives.

       I gauze your face with my hands

       and every night we lost what we lost

      while you blink pours its wing-footed weight

       back over us.

       Eyes open, I see you seeing

      me here. You blink. Pigments collapse

       into a wound

      and lighten the skin around it. An orbit

       of surf against an atoll the weight of your name

       what we

      lost in my voice. The sound of that car rounds

       the corner, loops the block,

       you’re all, I need—lie

       together cry together—they’re police, you say, they love that song

       I push you back, away

      from the light into velvet shadows

       of the vestibule.

      Clouded liquids

       from a bowed sky bent like real trust

       move between our mouths.

       There’s always this

      always between us. This metallic click. Our bodies

       open and pressed against

       the cold steel

      of the front door, the СКАЧАТЬ