The Infirmary

Canopy

55 c a n o P y There is that dark undone from your woman’s hair that flavors a room, another dark that rinses hours from the eye, the mother dark we carry in our hands, an older dark that tunnels through subway bone, dark of the brain before the storm. We laid nine boys out in jungle dark, we did that in the highlands somewhere and fumbled with our hands to keep their limbs military. Better that pile it pleased them once as boys to make. if i took the one, set him on my knee, worked the mouth, made him dance, would that routine do as much for us this night or that? Peel the canopy back— a billion idiot stars to a billion squared, each tittering with light. ...