Joy Katz

A tang approaches, like the smell of snow. Illness like a color deepens— pale gray, thick-in-a-cloak gray, secret coat silk, and finally the weight of rough pelts heaped on the bed. The last enchantment of the day is tearing pages out of a book. The paper soft and thin, like falling asleep (a hand backstage smoothing my hair: the school friend, Lakamp, became an undertaker) My baby laughs to rip the pages. Stays by me, does this damage. The tearing moves like voltage through my own hands. Oh mother skimming fever I need him to linger are you still happening there, in your body? I just want to lie at the edge of breaking. Yes, I am still backstage, here in my body. The baby pulls out another page— leaving him would come this easily. I will bind myself to the thinnest sounds, the feather coming out of the pillow. Please keep ripping up the words. Please don’t need anything from me.

Department of Trance Department of Dream of Levitation Department of White Fathom Department of Winding Sometimes my son orders me lie down I like when he orders me lie down          close your eyes Department of Paper Laid Gentry Department of Sound of Sheets of Paper he covers me with then sings I like best the smallest sounds he makes then Department of This Won’t Sting Am I slipping away Department of Violet Static as if he were a distant station Department of Satellite My child says you sleep Department of Infinitely Flexible Web and covers my face with blankness Department of Tap-Tapping the Vein Department of Eyelash I can’t speak or even blink or the page laid over my face will fall Department of Clear Tape in Whorls and Double Helixes on the Wall He says Mama don’t look Department of You Won’t Feel a Thing I cannot behold Department of Pinprick He will not behold Department of Veils and Chimes of Lungs Afloat in Ether I like this best Department of Spider Vein when I am most like dead and being with him then, Department of Notes Struck from Thin Glasses Successively at Random I must explain to my child that sleep is not the same as dead Department of Borderlessness so that he may not be afraid of Department of Fingertips Lightly on Eyelids so I can lie and listen not holding not carrying not working Department of Becalmed             faint sound of him I am gone His song is the door back to the room I am composed of the notes

I was given a city, with coffee and sunlight. “The coin-purse smell of the subway,” I wrote. In the mornings policemen would stand, lightstruck and pleasured, over trays of danish. Mornings I wrote and workmen raised up their nets. Hallelujah the brick, the debris! I was given a city. The city got between me and God. I was given a house. The curtains breathed over wide sills. There was a leaf in the middle of the floor, I loved the crispness of the leaf. I loved the privacy of sills. The sills sailed, I fell into the sills. The sills got between me and God. I was given a mud hut. The walls curved to meet the ceiling like a tongue curves to make a word. I was given God, with salt and sweet together. I was given a piece of meat. I loved the flesh. I was given bread only. I was given only water. I loved the coolness of the water. The water got between me and the feast. I had an empty plate and there was the color of it. I cannot even describe the color of it. I was given a cell with a window. There was a certain light at evening. I was given nothing but the air, and the air dazzled.