flashlight solo

i.

inarticulate departures burr
this surface of water—

how darkly the orphan
squirrels his loss inside a raisin

& turns old photographs
into heart transplants

ii.

whose prisoner
is this body struck cold
on the ground

gathering black half-moons
under its mouth?

a book on the table talks
about a fish

iii.

to hold down a carp
with obituaries from a foreign

newspaper is
to admit failing the carp

& failure

has such small hands
throwing combs at the mirror

iv.

after a fire
the remaining teeth

eat themselves
into the ash

to be carried like hyacinths
among living things

v.

the rain slips
its shipwrecks into the pond—

that odor of urine
in the beak of a pelican

where the dead
have permission to live

Where does the universal live except in the particular?
—Jane Hirshfield

1
The girl in the shiny red
raincoat floats half the day down the river.
Her hair fishes the surface light.

Does the water bottle exist
outside its context of the natural world?

2
Sometimes seeing a wound
heightens the pain factor in the mind.
I haven't left for Idaho yet,
and already the Remington smells of drink.

My grandfather was a sword-
swallower in his time. He used a bandage
to tell people he could be blind.

Or blinded.

3
Like an glass eye, the K
rattles from the tabletop to the floor.
Even the Remington is suffering.

The last time I read my mail,
all the apostrophes
had become question marks.

4
When a red shoe finds
the silt, it may take up to thirty years
before it reaches the ocean.

The girl is wearing bracelets
of scars. She is purpling under both eyes.
She is all poise and dead leaf.

When the trout come, it is
to take away the fleshy parts of her face.