israel & his sister bethany











































& you left then. the chafing rope the winding coils. how close to the ground, not even suspended. slumping low beyond the human. slipping seated past sleep. the way the dark blood slows. the way you walk around the block & then you go home. never thinking to leave. & how the blood slows. could you write now for noone. could you burn the word to ash, & evenburning even then. could you write without the thought of you beyond. to be alone, do you remember being alone. even now the struggle to stand, that pull towards the floor. can you fool the world that you've desire. can you reach for things as if you want. the work of building, the effort of saying yes to more than bare life. or even, bare, life. how the blood slows.

to reach towards, to readthe endless pages, learn every lesson, have each drift away forgotten. would it be better to lay fallow on the ground. would silence hold as well. you move & grasp & pull for, what. that the gasp coming would stay, the breath catch. to be broken & so fully, broken open so entirely. what else could be loved so much.

there was so much then that would sudenly open itself. the world outside truly outside, the vessel at once a stranger. the way the floor can seem all that's approachable. the way the air & time stiffen to immovability. seeing suddenly you could cease, the effort could stop. & feeling, strangely, afraid.

a filling of the tongue, filing. the finest tip. a coil sprung, shallow depth of focus spinning softly outwards, the fine grain of desire, of sight, breadth of a single moment as if one could grasp it in hand, so immediate. there is where the light falls & then, finer still, where the eye falls, the center of focus, the thin skin barely holding. ankles thin as a deer's always, the pale white like a shaft of exposed bone - what holds you up, carries you over, gliding human through the garden thick padded on sod & dry root. the barely of presence, the gracing light.