Red Event No. 1, and: Triptych in Which the Man Is Now My Father

In any attempt at death, the body:

1. 1. turns in. Becomes the not air filling the cherry ore of its own mouth.

2. 2. casts not shadow, but is shade itself—dim gore::carmine umbra

3. 3. thinks of a hot thing.

4. 4. thinks of a flame so ready, it burns white.

5. 5. thinks of it piking the skin from the blood muscle, letting it all.

6. 6. thinks of sleep and hears nothing.

7. 7. thinks that if it does have a type of bird inside it, then what it has in its mouth is another carrion milked though its wound.

8. 8. has a fit of visions. Sees a velvet curtain bent out—a macaw’s scarlet breast cracked in two.

9. 9. wakes in itself loud and wet, wishing something had worked.

TRIPTYCH IN WHICH THE MAN IS NOW MY FATHER^*

In the first dream:

The man runs past dropping a black feather. He stops. Turns on his heel. Leans to pick it up. Places it inside my front pocket. My hands do not complicate the matter. In me is a hard planet already clapped by rain. When I pull it out, I am a fallow child.

In the other dream:

He is a crook and makes me swallow it. My head lies back into the knock. He is a well bricked inside the mouth that makes me. This is how I learn to say water. Looking up and with a dent of air caught in my chest.

In the final dream:

The feather is a headless bird. The man’s face is cast in the split-line of a shadow. He takes me by the meat of my collar. In another instance, we are both on hard and our cutting opens a door in my gut. Aping what’s already split.