The City She Was

The If of Omission

23 The Skeptic endless is so big a country— still there’s something soft in God’s line of reason that pulls on the part that longs for an end right out of me maybe it’s that this gets repeated in perpetuity presenting me to the idea we are both far away and right upon it 24 In-Between Elegy We had—one chance lined up on the museum bench—examining a Kay Sage painting of doors and robes— it’s quiet enough for contemplating an undoing—we stood knee deep in a bog of our own making— heretofore handled one another like grandmother’s horse figurine—even cleaned with our own raggeds—needing the fortress we were— and then to chip away at—to bear down onto—to find the holes and tear them larger—that would be the collaboration— If there had only been pauses—if only we had desisted in the tumble downward—I mean we clipped sisyphus and jill—made eddies we could not see to see— we were analysis and question—secrets forested—both imbued in poems— lies we thought at the time were— And I might have thought—commenting on the museum-goers instead— the one with the turquoise belt—the one with the diaphanous hair a halo round her— that this is—what terrible endings were—your hand over me—dining with its spoon fingers—the meat on my neck’s bones— ...