what kind of intervention
is a twist in the sensate body?
at the botanical gardens, one cactus leaned on another
which is one way a landscape can be compelling
in the artists’ studio today, I work to get my bearings
as personable forms populate the room
twisty sticks, dancing stents, I learn to see the knuckle
as a geographic lineation, proof of the blue ghost in the blue hour
of cholla cactus skeletons what I love
is proof that bone is irreducible
that any past wound would be bone
any limb an outcropping
bone for all my turning
milestones in the nest of the body
all the words we’re afraid to say
we revere: cancer, heart failure
then I heard a disembodied sound in the room
a humanoid presence, almost a female voice
though we are all cast, foreign to ourselves
in the dark, where we hide our requests
moments before the voice comes clear
a sound like a failure of anesthesia
no cognates, no phonemes, only the wail
of the mechanical race
going down—then the flash of lucidity, what kind
of message is an autoimmune message?
when I read, a cataract comes up over the body
on one side, true color, on the other
the inverse of ultraviolet light, autonomous blinking
breathing, vital measures let me go
in the artists’ studio one twisty stick begs another
this crowd of forms reasons as any crowd reasons
when approaching a spectacle: is it me? vine black
of this open mouth? I long for
the skeleton of disease
where the cell deaths are buried
to see what bone-value is apprehended
through the tomography machine
you move as the blood, a low rush
broken bone beneath healed bone