Occupations

It is the surgeon's job to find the place          where the flesh will part

and to put the scalpel inthe absence—to fill it,under the spotlight,

with a medical grade radiance. I knowthe story of exponential growth.

It is in my head—when everything else is there too

and when everything else is no longer relevant. I worry

an abscess until its thin membrane bursts against my tongue.

My mouth's pink surgeon, when my brainromps through its various anesthesias,

          relaxes into the easy chairof my incisors and hard palate. Does it

know I could slice it in half if the surgeontouches me just right? Does it know how

dark a room must get before the objects within it cease to be?

My room is never that dark.I lie there with John, debatingwhether the chair in the corner

is a noiseless crouching shadow that waits for us

to sleep or a chair on the other side of the room       piled with clothes or a chair

possessed and ready to split its seat and swallow us whole.

It is the brain's job to find          what it wantsin the world, and so it does.

The brain takes us down the corridor to the garden

in the alley, where the ground turns          from soil to the wind-

fluttering stillness of a flock of dead birds, where it is

the body's job to step out and findthe error, to correct it before it rootsinto the deepest corners

of the brain and anchors itself there.It wants to convince us the wreckage

of thought is itself a shadow in the cornerof the eye the operating theatre makes

when a quick twitch could burst a body into absence, and it does.