your shape is in the robe worn or not
a roominess of you folds into its cloth
a sachet in the drawer from which the air
of the place was taken fixed of you’re here
the smell has temperature and space
the wider warmth that buttered popcorn tastes
and not you it folds into a time’s clot
a sachet in a drawer personage of its own still you
*
I have to wear a bus to Rikers Island with
opaque tears up to my neck to get in to see you
in your two inch thick glass robe I have to imagine
you naked under to place my hand saying
I miss you against you where I can’t touch and love
has to break across insulating space still warm
I have to stand my day in the folding up put away
given you as time with you. I smell I need you on my clothes
*
I smell gunfire folded in to every turn
the city’s track laps into its hands on race
then files away not guilty I smell the drawers
of the records they keep folded away from stands taken
away distance doesn’t dissipate
the space between the bullet holes in you in me folded
you are the map I have to sleep with in my pocket to be sure
I know how to get out of here
*
your shape is in the robe the sharp creases
of its fold when you wore it blocked into
the counterpoint around you that even
folded stood you out to me that they couldn’t
see you that one day they would shoot
always folded into the robe you wore
gun or not phone mistaken or empty handed innocent
or not there is this fold on itself we sleep in
in the fabric
of this country’s culture
Leave a Reply