Not That It Could Be Finished

Ann Lauterbach

She holds a conversation with her ornaments,

stray or contingent, heaped in patches

darkly and then loosened

onto the table to be consumed.

Collect me, they seem to ask,

into an assembly; construe us

like any morning onto any day.

Bring us forward notch by notch

into a paradigm of comfort

to be clasped: any cup will do.

Any dance? Take a seed

and blow it toward the curtain

which, like a bright shield

hugging breasts into radiance,

is seen and spoken of and desired.

Will any silence fit? So many

columns of air are held upright

in inebriated passage,

so many paper stacks

brittle under the weight

of what was news to attentive readers

as zones of holy strangers

feed through tunnels their imported cares.

Stare at us, they seem to say,

we are windows propped up against the sky,

quotations of light waiting to sail

into your aperture, calling because because

and now now now. And the good body

is pulled over the original rapacious body

like a huge sock, its cornucopia

of sour wind and dust emptied into the firmament.