Mary Hickman

I A cave with arms at the mouth. Our hero is blind: everything he hears he sees. Hear! Gold light sifts to his ear. A roar. The seas beaten—his duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix, destined for heat, they blush. II William's cabbage heart shook. He dragged himself from the dirt. If he could rest his ears he could see ginkgos in his city. The pretty boy I mean & Will, who were both aging with their senses curbed until they knew New York City by the root & crack. III As if there is a fig tree rooted in heaven & each of its leaves knows all the rules. 8:45 a.m. hum: he saw the boy had fallen into a manhole & the fig tree had fallen into a manhole & neither could be the sound of hands splitting gold hands landed up the breadth of William's back. God bleeding me a kind of blooded cry my lady makes me a heron or my leg for a stump the cursed in loam my venomous thumbs my His guts an a-readied muck. IV If your hand had been dusk- yellow not a lantern but winged —a bridge or a dove sprung from the dirt. Trying to make a shape. The feathered thumb herring— bone. We would not fall. V I brought you in from the garden since I can't stand the trees' visions. William you will be there the last stately in ribbons. But the vision is a fattened glee. The glee is a clubfoot. The glee is a mutt. The eyes sewn up the air & nothing can be seen but visions. You are burst sideways like a fist in water. Your maker staring into an apron of mud. Thou art bore a hole in the man. Thou art not a bloody bit, not the man.

I A boy was covered in pigeons. He put birdseed in his hair and crotch so the ghostbird would descend and devour him. I saw the brown bird with the yellow breast smoking Lucky Strikes. Thought she might be the Holy Spirit. There are no birds only what this typewriter flushes out. The cliffs are made from stone doves. And the boys had beautiful lips. II The Outside suggests a tunnel to ride what he says through a tunnel. Geography, animal life, the eventual human being. Anatomy on the page is sexier, my ghost. The page of real thigh, my mister, opens at the top to be eaten like the sun you can recognize eats her rays. Greasy misery covers my hands. It bothers me to touch a carcass. Dead branches. Bothers me. III God's big eye is a pink cubicle. God's big eye stretches around me, a great balled gown. I look for him in the roots of the roofless space. Mons pubis corresponds to the real bird. The lung. The wing. IV I demand the air beat. The birds scared up into motion and I expect revelation. I have my lusty knife. Left cigarettes on your grave and chant. J is for Jerusalem. Returns the poet to an invisible homeland. Resurrects the liver. Saying goodbye to a ghost is a hoax. The birds are still in flight. Unhook the birds. V Sick orange sky I hate I shall see it opened, the sunny aftertomb and a real poem at the gate. The erratic footprints of birds upon the sand or lacerations. No limbs at our disposal, only the desire of limbs to reflesh. The ghost gestures. I am filling your borders with letters. This is the new word—get up and live.