When I got home, I striped everything off . . .
  Trust it with my life.
  If instructions are laid beforehand.
  Instructions down to the wire.
  She was so good with instructions.
  It was what made her perspire.
  Wish I could trust it without instructions.
  Wish for a day without work.
  She didn’t want to blame anyone for her jowl.
  But it was coming . . .
  like time and a rose.
*
  Do you think John is scared
  to look me all the way through?
  Sometimes I feel like I could be see-through
  and that’s what I do for John.
  When John is sleeping tonight
  I will send him my thoughts.
  When you are see-through
  that's what you can do.
  When John is sleeping tonight
  I will tell him how they tried
  to gauge out my third eye
  making a clean dig
  when I looked in the mirror
  it felt as though I’d never had a third
  eye. And it cut me
  to the core, I must confess I felt very empathetic to that core . . .
  And then a few weeks later
  why, it started to grow back . . .
  What is inside me like melanin no one can gauge out
  that wants this third eye stay?
*
  This is enough of a test for John.
  If John passes this test, well, I don't know . . .
  Maybe then I can ask him to confirm.
  Maybe I can then send out other tests.
  Of my complete see-through.
  John, John, do you know who?
  Do you see? Have
  you seen me?
  Can you tell? Would
  you tell on me?
  It's ok, ok John, I have passed enough tests
  for the both of us . . . And I’ll, I’ll
  get you in . . . Why not?
*
  Why did we come here?
  We didn’t need to come here . . .
  But it was another place for us to go.
  Did we think we could come here
  to thresh? Who would think this would
  be a place
  for one to do
  one's threshing?
  Though we are not brought to any precipice
  in the flatness of this place is
  a hiddenness a road around which
  we cannot see beyond the threshing
  beyond coming and going.
  Yet between each hiddenness
  is there a flatness within which there is a dwelling.
  That’s not why we could have come here. To stay.
*
  How did the first two humans come to know how to mate?
  Sometimes I walk around and think how strange all of us clothed the way we are.
  Sometimes I walk around and I notice
  how one person is clothed the way they are
  and then another person is clothed another way
  and then the first person makes a street turn
  and then another person walks up driveway
  toward a house, let’s say. Do they take off their clothes
  once they disappear from my view?
*
  There was something about this girl
  that drew Miss Antarctica to her, too.
  It was the way she could make a grown man
  blush inside by the way she talked
  because what she said was serious
  that Miss Antarctica always wanted
  but had always gone about in the wrong way.
  If you were left alone for a long enough time with this girl,
  she would eventually absorb you.
  If you were left alone in a hatchery working side by side
  with this girl, she would eventually absorb
  all of you . . . Even if she didn't want to . . .
*
  There were only a few structures
  on the island which announced their presence
  loudly to the inhabitants of the island.
  Your eye drew up to it, this structure,
  but from which center did they emanate?
  It should be said however
  of these structures
  that they did not draw your eye
  the way a place off island might draw it,
  the way something one might consider
  or call a monument
  might draw your eye.
  It should be said as well
  that these structures
  which announced their presence
  seemed to announce their presence, yes,
  but unlike other structures one might
  consider or call a monument, for
  the center from which they emanated this presence
  could never truly be detected.
*
  Did you ever find it strange
  that the type of person who could be contained
  content to be contained
  content to go from smooth to sun baked
  did you ever find it strange
  that the type of person who could go very far
  go very far into the estuary
  could conceive and conceive and conceive
  did you ever find it strange
  that the type of person who could go very far
  go very far into the estuary
  would never want to stray?
*
  Make sure you are back inside
  once the outside starts changing
  Go outside now before it’ll be changing
  outside by the time you need to
  come back inside.
  It will be changing soon enough
  you won't be able to stay
  outside long enough
  you’ll have to start walking back
  when you start walking back
  you’ll be tempted
  to do so backwards.
*
  I will draw your eye . . . very far inside . . .
  into my monument . . .
  I could be John's center? No. Don't
  play games within.
  Though this is a monument
  and a monument is a thing
  the twenty children anywhere else
  would play their games around
  and that's what they want them to do . . .
  I will draw your eye . . . towards the flatness
  around every corner . . .
  beneath us and our center . . .
  It's a fine feeling
  when the most monumental thing on
  this island is the monument
  on that other little island
  with the other little freaks.
*
  My negotiations with John today
  have been less productive than usual.
  I think when we first began negotiating
  I was enraptured
  though my waters were ostensibly
  quite still and John didn't know that I could
  even have
  another motive. And though
  he still may not know that we
  are the ones
  who have other motives I think
  because my rapture
  has gone more and more
  into the background
  he feels
  that this action
  of negotiating will no longer get him
  whatever he thought I would
  accompany him on.
*
  When I was born, I was already a year old.
  One year. So I’m one of those
  whose birth year is always bound to be slashed.
  I was always one or zero, ten or eleven,
  that kind of thing.
  When I was born the quilt was not yet
  handmade, the quilt was machine born.
  When I was born I came out falling
  towards the ground, I came out falling
  towards a soil, I came out falling
  towards the hooves
  untangling themselves
  the way hooves do when frenzy
  comes when they sense they are prey
  towards these hooves
  and the broken feet
  and all the hooves.
  So, and so,
  it's high time . . .
*
  Did John's center stop growing
  to fit into the container that held him?
  Didn't John's center grow only as much
  until the container said no?
  Did John try to grow and then at night
  when he was put back
  into his container
  his center became blunted?
  I brace myself in the street.
  No one knows about my brace but me
  and one other person
  who doesn’t even know where I belong tonight.
*
  When you hear forty years ago
  do you hear today?
  What about fifty?
  When we first got here
  I nodded in disbelief
  when they mentioned how here nobody
  locks their doors, how locking
  a door is an aberration here.
  It took me two months
  to give it a shot actually.
  Still each time I have a moment
  because locking it has become so ingrained
  in me that I feel they are trying
  to reach my numb pacifism or something
  until they have it until they have finally
  found our numb pacifism and
  at that point
  they can just do whatever they want.
*
  Last night I dreamt that my body
  could float and it floated
  until the ceiling was there and it battered
  against the ceiling that was there
  it battered until with the help
  of a tornado it flew through it the ceiling
  and then it came to another ceiling
  and the tornado moved on then
  it came to another ceiling
  and kept battering at it
  until a swarm of angels came
  but they did not come to rescue me
  per se they started taunting me
  and one of them played nicer
  and one of them played indifferent
  and one of them was veritably cruel
  but it was the nicer one that wanted
  something from me and this something was my liver
  You know they weren't going to hold my hand through it
  And I don't know
  whether I negotiated with them or not
  I just remember vividly
  the way my body encountered the ceiling
  and battered up against it and against it
  and how the tornado seemed to save me
  and then tornado would disappear.
*
  I've had to become this way I suppose . . .
  So that what you see as what you get
  has come by way of getting
  because it saw . . .
  I said . . . well . . .
  I can be it.
  Like that. I volunteered!
  I suppose I came across as some kind of joke
  and for a while this threatened
  to crush me
  but somehow it didn’t. Somehow.
  I became practically marvelous
  at jokes . . . until I didn't have to tell a single one.
  People would be very confused . . .
  Sitting at a table, I would say nothing,
  and then, and then I would ask a question,
  and then another question,
  and then another question,
  and then, as though by accident,
  although everyone knew it wasn't an accident,
  I would also tell a joke.
*
  Maybe mooning must have been invented
  on this island or on an
  island at least.
  Yesterday I was walking past the curve
  where I saw that truck with the peels
  and the cans and the gallon water jug
  and in the window of the house behind it
  there were two cheeks
  the sound of laughter from the bushes
  and then fluttering, crows, and then
  wagons and they ran off . . .
*
  What would happen to us if
  How many of us would it take
  How few of us do we need
  How many of us in a room
  become a group of crows
  How many of us around a table
  become a single entity
  How many cilia on me
  until I become detectable
  What would happen to us if
  we latched onto the wrong thing
  if we mistakenly believed
  the thing we were latching onto
  were the thing we were supposed
  to latch on to when, when, in fact,
  it was just
  the container holding us