–– because I couldn’t carry it, I left a copy of Deadly Intent: Crime And Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive 1890-1950 on the 3rd floor of a building I worked in. Each dead family member on the cover had a neat inkhole bullet mark on their foreheads. I felt shame because whomever had it next would see that I’d marked certain pages.
*
You rent a fully-furnished place, and deal with its plastic for years. You imagine yourself like a spidery clamp, unmoving but weak. All your own possessions are inane, sentimental. The transatlantic travel of the favorite fork has a sadness, when you think about it, plus the
*
decorations, all 5 of the starry porcelain things / pale green star, a pale pink, too, a pale brown tree / leaves of pale white, the star / in reclaimed ironware shop of heralding stuff / jars of ginger or novelty or scissors that broke / small & pointless to cherish & imply / stuff, belonging / until slung handful by handful by handful into whatever receptacle would hold the most / in one of those always-fleeing moments / crammed in the featherless unyielding bird / satin slab of ideal ikea pillow / stained, unnerved, were you / really so filthy?
*
All the mugs have been waylaid / one with an overview of regional language / and the
raspberry colored one / I’d think / I’d like
a dress that color / thought I’d take it, but I left it
in the morning evening curl-into and safe-time / the filaments of a sadness / grant me
an hour as faust / I’ll come back later
*
I’m supposed to say the lost books kill me, but secretly it’s the clothes
sweaters unraveled
or those perfectly reasonable, but taking up space &
clock of the heart
I need to pay more attention to my dreams
since items might come to life
sublunary figments, just small ones
After rain
the patterning of rain, of rain the patterning, ofrain, frain
all dressed up in jeans
I was allowed to keep one box
and things to fit in that box.
I chose my old baby shoes, crocheted, not shoes, really, a
tiny pearly button. They went on a doll, the doll was not kept.
*
After rain I threw handfuls of jewelry into black sacks / beads curled around shoes
with 4lb heels, a bracelet I never wore
but wafting around –– thinking of a better me –– of an evening
I’d slip it on, off, it was far too big
then carried the sacks one by one, to great canisters
by the stretch-view water / shame, gulls scratching / a bleak alarmsound / a man
shadowy by the lock / others too
So it felt / in that lowering month, so bitter / those back–and–forths
*
Did I leave the cardboard box with pieces of the Berlin wall inside / next to the travel needle-and-thread, in the drawers / drawer of dead receipts I got in trouble for / soon, I just know
I will wake up / to find myself boringly opening / closing, alighting on the box, with a warmth / warmth of an idea, that the Berlin wall is still there / but I will use the box to encase a present, like a key / to something large I could never afford for/ someone / or maybe just a red velvet macaron / surprise / in this abeyance, so many rituals / in one of my
*
in one of my towns, there was a multi-storied antiques shop called Good Things. I
moved through all those suspended rooms
each one with its own purpose: the dead bureau, the straw doll, various games
in the attic, aneurysm clot-red lava &
spindly-legged ‘60s
old radio so resolute in the corner
and the time in the air
in the stultifying air, a footfall of non-ownership
*
my neck cricked & over-hot / to remember the chair that stood, stands
& hostess unit /
in a yellow wood house overgrown / a possum / a chair that stood, stands
in the line of sight /
warm and woody / small in its halo / classy legs and back
$8 faded green leaf /
thereabouts / in a second-hand store / horder’s off-room
dirty classy stencil /
stood, stands where the hallway ended / in a place after the formerly
arid over-hot, lonely /
there, in a wood house overgrown / haloed with animals, a colony
we hosted /
one night / the possum on its hind legs / & the clubgoers never saw
their voices /
in the line of veering, faded in green / the leaves so warm
I know the chair stood / and ended / right there /
because I left it so /
the neck it feels / small & arid / to remember safety / safety
or thereabouts /
*
& the one item I’ve hauled the world over –– being a violin of dim and cheap proportions –– is the one I could leave back in its tree / on one of those planes slapped on some corridor, becoming smaller by the year, tinnier / about which I feel nothing, just an opaqueness, the null idea of needing / what a fraud to say it mattered
*
When I catch sight of a transplant in my now–closet, I feel unnerved –– startled –– vacant uncaring –– it does not register “here.” What are you doing, still in my life? E.g. electric coat from a glowy interstitial week, twenty–eleven, rain dolor, unpacking plastic bags, same shops, same.
*
The other night I closed my eyes and traced my hands along the countertop. Oddly I have moved into a place of palimpsest: I can feel the bones and tamped–down life of an old kitchen, inch by inch. I can feel the cutting boards, I can feel the clagged weird marble, the cupboard–fronts that never seemed clean. To the left, that drawer with my best teas. To the right, stretch upwards and scythe the air for glass storage. The pretty flour I left, the pretty baking trays. Sound of smalltown boy in rain refrain. Anyway. I padded myself around in darkness for a while. Don’t ask me what else I was doing, what noise I was making.