House of the Deaf

Sketches for Odilon Redon

Sitting with Giacometti

The Eye

    after Neruda

So bloodshot, weepy, intractable as ice floe

an eye caroms off the American landscape,

threshing every wheatfield, dumpster carriage,

cotton gin for a steady hand.  Over you

and me it hovers, blinking at ur-old sturgeon

last seen coddling a purse of salmon eggs,

which bulge and bloat the river till it breaks.

The Ear

The porches of your ears are marvelling of course

at the sound of my voice.  When you whisper such things

about my dream of ice, surely you know you're wrong

to be sure that I know you're wrong.  Why else would you

prolong that thrum of the woodcock's tail upon

the beaten oak?  Why would you ask me three times

what it was you thought I was waiting for?

The Hand

Can't touch the shoulder of rock where the pivot lies.

Can't devolve into iron ore.

Says nothing in front of the eye.

Says piano, orange peel, tube fallopian.

Over the fontanel of fire which burns across

the wetlands, the Cayman Islands.

Over the alms of the poor.

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