Science  Write  Now

Sensitive, yes, but I must be more

                  than a thing.

 

My corners are picked at until they become

 

sharp argent windows. 

            Then I am polished, 

smoothed with pumice, made                     a revelry

            in a tight sweater. Did men ever think

 

that I may also      explode,

                          that my violence may be all violence? 

 

The nitric acid purges my surfaces—

manufactures me chromatic & new. Am I

                      ready for such terrible dimensions? 

 

Lathered in a bromine bath, iodine

crystals soak my visage.              

                          Metamorphosis is better

than baptism. Squeamish & sizzling,

                                        I pickle in the shade, 

       but I know, really, I am 

                                  slowing

                                         down. 

 

Dissolving 

          into resolve, they are trying to make me

susceptible. Tight & raw, 

                I am locked in. Porous    fumes

fumigate me

         in the manhandle           of machine.

A heavy sheath conceals

   me. Exposure can burn.

 

For a while, there is only the invisible 

                                               eye 

with an invisible thorn-made        telescope

tattooing my skin. Then the staggering

                    roar pours from image

and the woman I can never be appears 

             seated, her hair an infinity 

    of twisting helixes, inventing

              static and spiral, 

doing what electrons do 

         when no one is looking.       

                                    Her skin pierces mine

long shadows over tired silvers.

Her jaw is lithe, unsmiling. Her 

eyes look back at herself through

                     the portal of me, glowing  

and dead. I document memoirs of gray. 

  

       My chloride pushes up, fetches

water. Her dress buttons to her voice

   box, all the way up. I hold her. 

            I see her. 

                    I be her. Will she see

          me, reproduced again & 

   again?           

 

        Is anyone there? 

 

                                        She is 

burnt into me in more

than traces, but in scars.

I want to form an alliance. I want 

to make my mark on her. Tension leaves 

a tint in the limned moment. I develop slowly—the light 

that festered is not yet gone & she latches 

 

onto my silver. And when the mercury hits me, 

         I can suddenly feel all the colors, and I wonder

what I was so afraid of.  

                 I cannot be smudged negative. 

I am her soul walking 

          in the yellow grasses,

red bonnet towed to her bare shoulders,

                                                           burning

through the crisis

             of too much light.