As/Is







6.13.2006


Incessantly, Intentionally She Says His Name

Incessantlly, intentionally, she says his name
as though we may decide to like him if we hear it
frequently, mellifluously, imbued with her affection.

And when she speaks his name, it sounds as though
she's holding on to it to keep her breath and heartbeat
moving to a tune she's sure we've heard and she is hearing.

Within hearing distance are the consonants, the vowels,
the syllables that form when tongue and teeth pronounce them.
She pronounces each as if her life will not collapse if she repeats it.

She repeats the vowel sounds and little fences made by consonants
surrounding, and as if protection is a function of her voice,
her heart and hemline, filling in the blemishes, the vacancies.

She is enlisting us to close the openings through which the letters of his name
might slide, might inform the aura that surrounds his lifeline
of the mirror image of a struggle through soft white clutter of a cloud.

She requests our hope for leveling the plot of land that stretches
between people as if to take away the barriers she knows
are there and will be there so long as we can see them, taste them, reinvent them.