I’m After a Long Silence

Into a body unfamiliar. Into a poem as into a flesh stepped out of. Now I know I don’t want to know what I know but what the poem wants me to know. I’ve been long gone from the voice of making poems and long gone from the light that’s there—as in a dream we’re long gone from the day, or worse: as in a day and long gone from a dream. I want no more the fear of the unfamiliar. But the ache of my tongue languaging what I can’t say. The opening of the whole sky as if the sky is a body. There is no body. So I am gone enough already. If I have too much of a knowing, I am country and territory, when I’m only land and slipping into sea and sea to begin with. And so I will step into my voice reading poems and hope you will listen this Tuesday. These poems from Severance are the first poems I’ve not made with my hands or voice but by listening. My hands made them of course. But for once they are unruly in all the classroom of the world and not making their letters neatly how the teacher says. They are strangers even to me but I know them and love them and am nourished by their hunger. They open their moths to swallow the light. They are more toward a hum and hush where all the voice goes. Toward a more perfect silence. Here’s one. I hope you will listen. 

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