Zoë Hitzig

I’ll be the first to admit it.
As another swaying casualty,
I do admire your suspension
technique. Your feast and famine.
Your field and fasten. Yes,
how you slung up that wasp.
How like a construction-
paper crown reality now appears.
The rhomboid jewels losing
what little span scissors
and tints lent them. Like sage
leaves giving way to their grey floss.
I still don’t know your name.
Or maybe you told me and I
404 Error. My index of memories
obsolesced. The heraldry
shrunk to point. Classification codes
dropped their prefixes. Wait,
maybe I do now remember.
Your given name. Isn’t it
404 Error. My mom’s name.
Brother’s too. The name I cry out
in the direction of my shoe
in the rust bluing of morning.
When I try to make something,
anything, move. “First things first,”
404 Error. Who’s or what’s to blame.
Having used up so much silk
and hunger, the wasp twists
in its terminal cocoon.
It’s not actually requesting
an apology. No. That’s a salute.

Comes on and quickly: A thin worm slips sylphlike

             into the inner ear and spirals to line the cochlea

                          in coil, rests, bloats and distends, widens cavity



walls, bloats down to the throat and my head cocks

             under its weight. My evening shadow clutches, clasps

                          a tuft of hair pulling me toward her, serving



as further proof that shadows want flesh to buckle slump, stretch

             horizontal to sow substance where there is none. Especially up-market,

                          up high and uphill, this soil swills envy and its variations.



The torque saddles my spleen and my legs move like crabs,

             corybantic and feral to stand in for gravity and the plane.

                          *Dear shade, dear daemon, do not muster, do not envy.*



With this motion I descend, towed. A shipping heir

             gifts me a bouquet. Tucks one sanguine rose behind my ear.

                          My teeth tear at the rose-tops. The pluck not mine, I cannot stop.



There is nothing precious about the periphery and

             molars are equally useless if they fall out. *Let go please**

*                          *shadow sister watch me swear you one wisdom tooth.*



Unstead unbalanced I bare my rose-stained teeth

             with foreign fury, spit the petals and hurl the stems. Descending, nearing

                          the port now. *Please loosen your grip we are *one *you* one *I*.



The shipping heir follows. Asks a merchant seaman for

             aniseed boiled in water and left on the stovetop of Commerce.

                          The seaman asks his nursing wife who asks



what for. Is this heart-ache or is this worm-

             wood lodged under or has it reached the ear.

                          White linen is most beautiful stained with attar



and umber—when it speaks for itself—for what unstained

             is ever permanent? On this ashy shore I have no resolve or

                          resolution. Drive is driven. *We must hurtle together regardless*.



*Our history is express, likewise our en-

*             *rapture. *Respect’s deckhand once carried a para-

                          sol, which has since rusted over in the aromatic



nothing we will soon be glad to remember

             with clarity. *Sister Anise, sister shadow, I am spinning.*

                          *Retrograde. In sand. Crab-like legs one needle.*



With the three spins before the gyroscope falls

             its needle traces my name in the ash-sand.

                          When the rim touches down my orb-skull cracks.



Captive liquid falls in tears, which fill the cursive:

             a self-portrait too sad to admit agency and yet

                          this is a flavor I have wrung myself. A flavor



for which I have obtained a Protected Designation

             of Origin which means what I choose will choose

                          to swell inside me and it always tastes how it was made.



This flavor is black but brilliant, the incan-

             descent paragon of lustre and forgetting

                          *taste my parsley of enmity, an-*



*imus, anisum.* I taste acquired

             like black licorice or leucorrhea.

                          Like ouzo in brine,* I drink you,* like:



Umbilical. Milk that’s pressed from stalks.

             Umbellifer. Milk of noontime, milk that calls me back.

                          Umbra. Milk of malice, milk that soothes no aches.



A wild wheel leaking prone like spleen: seed and sown.

I. 



 



Will I eat the rotting apple before me. 



Is that why you left it, inclining toward 



 



the blank-faced compass, oblique to 



the violin missing a string in spilled 



 



wine from the overturned chalice, 



pooling at the chipped carapace 



 



of a turtle. And whose skull is that, 



also chipped, also slow on the cloth. 



 



II. 



 



Am I obliged of this cluster to pluck



the fragile ones. Just as in the anatomy 



 



of woman every station must have



its briny tubes. Just as in the anatomy



 



of choice every action need not have will 



behind it which is to say choice does not 



 



in the penumbra of utility 



reveal preference. 



 



III. 



 



But I want to engage. Want to tell 



you all I have learned about will 



 



in the intervening years.



If I peel the apple I can soak it in 



 



vinegar, carve out a face and 



leave it to dry in the sun. 



 



Let it shrink into a head 



swathed in the tablecloth



 



shrouded in shouldness. 



Perhaps it will remind me 



 



of normativity. Or of



the grace with which we used 



 



to put one foot in front of the other 



to walk or of the inertia that has since 



 



filled in the roads around us. 



Reminders, remainders, remedies— 



 



have I solved your tangram, 



did I play the right game, 



 



my scarecrow is small but vain



 as I am—void, pour, *drain*—



 



the difference is its flesh, 



which is now preserved— 



 



my scarecrow will remain



on this table in this foyer 



 



until you move it, which know- 



ing you will be when you tear up



 



a letter you believe you never 



received. I will believe the same. 

Consider also desired

things. The currant

in the navel under

my long robe.



A split in the lip

yields its hard red ball

the one in the tip

of a pen and as sore.

Rough and parted.



Coccyx pressing

spine in sidesaddle

I span head to tail

scratching circles

on the scalp to roil.



A small machine

a sphere in the corner

of the room

makes noise’s noise.

Swamps the sticking

swish of release.

Is knowing.





You are here

to carry—pour. 

It is with his mirror he reconstructs 



the passage



of time. 



The warden walks from the north



wall to the south



one time every hour. Cannot



hear his approach—too loud



with the flushing, the



slamming echoes 



of the two—but can



see it in mirrors



if held here like this



yes, only if you are outside 



can you look in, only with 



a mirror can you look out.



The forcing of myopia 



through the frosting of 



glass windows.



 



It is with his mirror he waits, thinks,



“is there such a thing



as normal when I am 



a person, people have teeth,



and I am not entitled to them?”



Just wants teeth to not 



hiss when speaks, so can



be heard, understood.



They say you will



die anyway, what need 



you teeth for—to atone,



to whet a blade for carving?



 



It is with his mirror he shows  



a creation: thirty-two gamepieces,



and a board. Carved of soap,



dyed with pen. 



It is with his mirror he counts backwards,



inducts backwards,



comes to the chill



that comes of it.



It is with his mirror he sees a nick 



and blood. Cut himself



shaving because the present 



 



is closer to him



than he could see



is closer to him



than to anyone



else I know. It absorbs 



him as a blanket 



facing wind. There is 



no wind here 



nor any toy or string to wind, find



wound. But there is a wound where 



the selves in mirror



are closer than they appear.



 

 



Now I must stray

from appearance or action,

              because there will not be another image of him

              to superimpose upon the rest and sum over histories



 to derive an unwavering

awareness of the person

              inside him. I must now, on my own, perform the re-

              construction while he still blows on the hair



on her neck though

the pursuit is long-

              forgotten and he dead afresh

              has no breath left to dissemble.



He abused

his talent, or,

              misused is more potent a word

              for his use of that naïve ability to reinvent



or be swayed such that

beginnings happened

              everywhere and always for him,

              happened as each flees her own enemy. . .



Despairing of his own

inner construction

              he prolonged himself, not so skilled in self

              -destruction, feeding *sterilem*, futile, *amorem*,



love with his own

destruction or hope, sperando,

              *nutrit*. What patina of desire (of care)

              so often unpolished her skin



that skin morphed

into bark

              with arresting varnish, while she stood

              wounded and rooted to the earth,



and she unmoving,

became the pivot

              about which unreason willed the act of turning,

              dependence made mechanical and fixed,



reflexive even. I am

left to wonder

              will her foliage survive with his death

              or will it fade along with the calculated forms



on his forearms—

artistry, or, willingness—

              perhaps his lyric or quivers (in death)

              habebunt, *will have*, her still. If not,



perhaps in death

he might

              render her in alabaster not laurel

              with sharper touch and blunter brambles



and perhaps then will I mourn.

water hangs low,

rarely falls.

here, our trees and hands

fall victim to it,

vouchsafed by it.

victims, because it erases

cicadas’ footprints

and the army ants’ prey.

peculiar though, this erasure—

with wider aperture

humidity lifts and stays,

footprints are removed

and yet remain overhead

in extended exposure.

a suspension—

retaining multitudes

that ought to slide

like moments off the hands

you live through.

seize this history

in salt and landscape’s

italic interstice: hold.