1.
What have I lost—

the whole fucking deal that’s what—

a question
to squelch

What’s the paucity?

the petition to regulate
green in dereliction

What’s the full tree?

full space, full of
open, open.

Open. Open.

right ear
flickers large

sloppy
meticulous ringing
clusters

nerving

the left eye the right eye

the middle hand
arm to the brain

relief from all that

2.
Old attempts fail

and the daughter leaves to crawl
toward the mountain’s ruin

vacant stomach
frozen on a stalk

and bruised
as if here

as if not

as if not

material.

3.
The transcript is lost

she’s collapsed on the floor

screaming, pounding the floor:
where is it? why is it gone?

It’s all I have,
my father’s words.

The body is gone.
The voice is gone.

The body is gone and the symbol is gone.

The graduation photo is lost the news clipping is lost
the story she wrote is lost the picture from the ski trip is lost

the transcript is lost.

4.
The body is gone and the symbol is gone—

Language is sliding.

large territories bound ground
slides all that

can be
ungrasped.

Nothing so direct as death?
But dying—

There’s a meander.

5.
Stop on the next stone

to reach an abstraction—

A hum or a buzz still
the mouth forms

a shape that unstates.

She returns to the volcano every day or so;
life of the heavy footsteps,

parallel to the river, flat stones across the stream.
Set forth, leave it.

Cross it; step across.

6.
We carry voices and place them on his body:

do we think we’re stationary

as he departs?

things press

things declare in the aggregate

monitors, precise sounds of obscure significance

she kisses him on the face, on the thin hair

7.
The body consumes itself

in every language

the body’s emptiness
swollen

the door is burning

8.
sudden appearance of birds furious
showers into many
darkening

how to run

in a vestibule

at any time feeling you can wake up

by deciding to, just—
saying,

I’ve had enough,

let me move, let me breathe.

10.
Somewhere, someone is writing this.

There, when he stands or sits up,
a newly mordant little creature lifts its paw,

explains why the boxes and the ceiling and the fires in the leaf piles
are so busy, what it feels like when the wind singes

his father’s eyelashes.