“Object Permanence” and Other Poems

Object Permanence

You are a black hole
because you have been told
you are a black hole.

Every time you come close
to finding your [other] name,
the hungry part of you awakens, devouring
your definition. This deity wanders
through the interstitial marshes

of your body—the parts
choked out by rushweeds—destroying
the [soft] parts. To be [defined]

is to claim object permanence
in the order of things. How do you take
your place among rocks and mountains—
how do you say, i am [alive]

without losing yourself?
You find it through everything
around you. You measure

by what is [missing]. You return to this
burial ground again [and] again,
searching for two-names
and anywhere there is [enough]

space to lay down
your knife.

Further Possibilities

________

Intimacy

Sweat that smells like yeast,
the touch of lived-in linen
against a cheek. Rough

hands that press into your arm
like pressing into a mango.

A broken suyod at the sink / or a bottle of efficascent oil.

Lines in a face seen only when close enough
to touch / gray hairs that grow a new crop each season.

A door left open

a crack. When you come home,
a dimming porchlight and a kitchen
filled with the smell of simmering pospas.

The intimacy of a mother with a shape like your own,
a look that says come here, child.

By its Name, a Wolf