SPINE

man's body at auction
woman's body at auction


I bit a piece of my tongue off when they opened my back


side-round	neck-slue	
this the bath of birth and all 
is in procession

wench		buck		ninny being 
breast
milky bond	

bound by white ink I worked for her
and she took my book


SPINE

hinged back column 		BOOK		that 5. resembles 		
spina	spin	pin 	 
		
of a thorn	thorn		torn


BODY

failed business failed 
machine failed factory			apraxia
		march fruitfully and multiply 

the horror of idle 	
being three four five	family as limbs 			to map and re-
draw her lack
		
leak	deteriorate	discharge	denuding	

one two three four	failure 
to progress	pro-
duce	deprive and expel	

to scope 	to trade 
and profit	

expel those glorious swimmers into ruinous excess	 	your	


MIRROR

At last he returns to the capital city from fifty years ago	

at last

from which he fled.


because of polio she needs a wheelchair		to which he flees.


pushes her over the cobblestones	

spills		war
marriage-body 		beneath scaffolding.


COMPASS

not the body but lacunae		negatives
imprinting	one disease
from another		the true from the false
legitimate from bastard		malign
from the benign		

the grid catches
the person	their secrecy into	
density	

	each truth a statue of words	I want your notes
wild


BODY

-less entire material	b. 	and lying	
remains apply 
				We
walked out in a body. 


SCAR

indicating former attachment	

Scarp	excerpt		

gap	gap	gape	

A steep slope.


SCAR

silhouette
numbered	measured

silhouette
who floods who falls 

who runs	silhouette
stage	hot floor 	history	

silhouette
quick feet	rubbed 
raw	chewed
off

cell	cuff	she	
is the script whose waters broke


LOT			

we work all from sheared 	cut 
from the wait to be whole 

silk	lightly folded	delicately
roughed

as Penelope's counter-
point 		I pull to silence 
the utility-touch of our age 	use-
value severing desire from the upper room 	


COMPASS

at the drawing's hem	skin 
opening into sentence

Renaissance-body	annotated	
anointed as compass

	(who knows what you feel as you go?)

at a loss		at a loss for


BODY

I drag around this body to let out this ache 
and to give to the ill their story		this is to survive or	
convive		

crooked		less 
able 		

(the crook a place to burrow)	


(and shall make straight a line) 			


tumescence and exudation severing 		swerve 
into story 
with which I		
(he swells		

a soldier's silence		she margins		
draws her


HEM

edge or border		1.	and stitch down
2. To surround				and shut

indecisive;	or fill a pause in speech 			RAW			

about answering.


LABOR

To retire when the work is done

	can you be without strain? 	Is such a peace political?


			shape clay into space for heavy
and to be light		
heaving this flesh 	bones		bend
and be straight. 			

When

power falls away we choose to give one body toward another

re-join justice with the empty.		It must be small.		Facing

each other all day long		I meet myself there.