Open Cartography

Begin mapping

between muscle and skin

where you are vibration.

In bed on New Year's Day,

fictive jerks of the wrist writing the morning paper, urgent and angry.

Be the ringing. In someone else's ear—

your ear: a red din bulging up, dreadful like heaps of wordless matter.

Resolution: Check the post-nasal drip of that scream.

How upsetting—

if the world would be let in on your secret.

Resolution: Promise tomorrow.

I'll keep my head on a crawling pillow,

trace my clenched jaw,

memory foaming at the mouth before I swallow.

How typical—

exposing the artifice, inventing the flicker of a cosmic candle, putting it out with my bare fingers.