Stranger. Adam Clay

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СКАЧАТЬ not turn over. It seems

      there are no middles

      anywhere—there are only

      logical lists in sensible places.

      Perhaps calling my view

      of the world palindromic suggested

      you wanted a window to work

      both ways, that you

      wanted coffee to put you to sleep.

      Disregard the snowbanks in your mind.

      Remember that ice expands

      as it freezes—its memory doesn’t

      defer to urgency or to what

      we desire. Snow

      and legs keep moving through

      the world listlessly. So much

      for floorboards. So much for

      absence that I once admired

      or even desired as if

      the world was in my shirt pocket

      waiting to unfold

      and scatter into the space between

      the two of us. You suggested a shadow

      could be musical

      or that the neck of a giraffe mimics

      the way some trees

      stretch toward the sky,

      free of knots and free of

      the mark of history

      upon them. It’s easier to say

      the word quaint than to be that way.

      Was your attempt at sensibility

      a worthy one? I don’t know.

      I don’t know how to place the weight of a breath

      behind the eyes. Money is a strange sort of memory:

      remember the market with nothing for sale?

      Remember how we corresponded

      for a month straight with words

      corrupted from their meanings?

      An ashtray wasn’t anymore.

      Arbitration became so apparent

      that suddenly knowledge (even a thought)

      ceased to be incredible.

      Take the words apart

      and determine what a grin can be.

      I’m not suggesting that grace deserves

      a particular place in the world.

      I’m suggesting that limitations

      are rarely deserved by those

      who impose them. Absence deserves

      more. You said waterlillies

      when I’m pretty sure you meant

      something else, perhaps something

      more distant. The sky was tinged

      the color of a hangover that day,

      and I knew better how to talk

      to myself than to you. And then somehow

      it’s Tuesday again

      and a school bus speeds down

      our street between the parked cars

      like some kind

      of generous distraction from

      whatever mundane thing

      was hanging over everything else.

      Maybe that word was empire? Perhaps

      you were hoping or desiring

      a bottle to place this house

      (like a ship) into? I’m

      hearing one thing

      and speaking another. My

      shirts aren’t pressed. Hell,

      they aren’t even clean

      and their colors

      have run elsewhere.

      In my mind, I see them bounce

      on the laundry line

      and wonder why.

      I didn’t understand what you meant

      at the time, but it made sense

      when I saw not a single bird in the woods.

      The climate dissolved overnight

      and you couldn’t have been more disinterested.

      A squelched fire hangs in the air

      and in the memory

      for years to come. It’s a terrible thing

      when we stop

      and consider how having enough

      means something

      different from even a year ago. Think

      of a swallow flying

      from one tree to the next

      and think of something from your own

      life that runs parallel

      to the experience of the first tree. There’s

      nothing. It’s afternoon all of a sudden.

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