All Data

I unspool hits and querieson the silky nickel screen in my palm:The octopus, I learn, cannibalizes;our ribs push and release with each breath;the sun’s corona is not quite solid, liquid,or gas, but instead a different state,a gasping, celestial fourth. My word,I’m on no one’s schedule here.I seek all data in spite of the consequences:the shrubby yew, the preying hunchof the Harrier jump jet, the, that great—they say—Blue Man Group,available through Sunday.

All’s inauguration.Cruising streets, I markthe wispy intrados of golden retrieversand the way the morning heat still holdsmy shoulders, hinting eddiesof a gathering front roiling the birds,getting me to talk to anybodyabout the weather. At the Speedway gas station,the sallow, narrow-faced kid behind the countermocks me kindly, popping out the call-and-response “Never”s in the Stones’“Beast of Burden” as I pay for my fueland contemplate Lotto.

I might never die on a day like this,might fold my mind into the origamiof “grateful man.” The changeable airpushes without serrations of worry,no quickened sense of the alien edgesthat occupy the periphery. The fragmentsof not knowing feel like the pewsof a glorious church on fire,like the glittering cracks in a Van Gogh,the eyes of all the animals at night,uncountable aspirations of a worldsubject to search.