Mar 20, 2008
By kate mccurdy
i saw
you on
whatstoday whatstoday whatstoday sunday close screens streaming corners
bathed in light light light and like an ambush there you
were, humming
something.
somethingsomber somethingsamba somethingsomnambule something blue and i couldn’t for my life make out a word.
Ghostly voices are spun in the threads
of this hammock. Sitting back with a handle and our hands on our stomachs, we recount
the days of lofty words and minor scandals,
books that followed, braying, into bed.
Mosquitoes, now as then, buzz and saturate
the breeze already thick with dead white men
echoing back at us. One such insect mounts
my unprotected leg, licks; I am bitten –
my blood submits, ceases to coagulate.
Perhaps it’s been infected with my old ideals,
preserved in minute nerves and bites
that never heal: too much laid bare,
I’ve sat up nights, I’ve had my fill
of shallow breaths from deep air.