The jolt that comes to bones

inside a tumbled streetcar

 

is what the painter considers

as she strokes her-

self into story. There is

less to the jolt that

 

comes as he shuts his eyes

before the monitor, save

 

what he imagines—a lightning

bolt, a god tapping

the shoulder. He imagines the

sky swelling

 

with ceiling fans or the

guano of extinct birds,

 

a jolt riding from his

shoulder

blades to his eyelids,

dropping with roller

 

coaster clacks to his

fingers. Here, he dreams of Frida

 

Kahlo. Here, he says, let me

spread my flesh out like a

table linen, let my bones be

silver that touches,

 

making, again, that clack. My

skull will be a glass,

 

set properly, I have class

enough. What jolt is

it to chew over class, his

body set before him as

 

a reader sips (perhaps) a

glass of something heady? We give

 

books spines, we break them.

The table will have

its legs, its head. The body

is upon us. Does the table have

 

a stomach? Is it simply there

to bear our hunger

 

without its own, like a

eunuch bathing a stripper?

What is the poet without eyes

or ears—reading, listening? He is

 

a platform—a place to set,

that to set it with. And if this is

 

all, what will he do when the

reader finishes a glass,

rises from the poet’s head,

and passes

 

into the city? Covered with a

linen, he is waiting for

 

something to spill, perhaps a

girl in Mexico rolling

her ankle in a street-

 

car.