Bose Says “Connected to Anne’s iPhone” Every Ten Seconds

April Freely


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