The Elephants

Acuity of Evening

The record of the imperfection of your thoughts
before they administer

anesthetic;
or the anonymity of the crowds in your prayers

and of choosing a balcony to the side of their surges, and

whoever turns
to convince you, you are praying for yourself

and you, unable to move

as if the balcony did not have a room behind it
in which everything you remember

is revealed
by the stent

funneling surgical light
into the shadow of the surgeon’s hand.

---

Body from Body

In the movie-screen version of your shadow it turns to the audience
with a woman’s face

and calls them
by the names of the people who appear in her scenes;

who else would you cast for the moments you stood in this light and
were no one you knew

and who would mistake your shadow’s hand, for something in the off-
screen

window’s light, and never warn her: and if you should
become
this person

will you remember she’s calling their names
through your

silence?

---

The Displacement Fragment

trenches bridged with eastward dunes
or their

shadows
where you

could cross to your mirages and be tracked

to their
images’

edges: to their shadow-less fronds and

their
foragers

checking your visions for descriptions

of them-
selves

catching their clothes on the bundles

of branches
they

never lit for the snake they cooked with

the
miner’s

fuse;