The Red Letter (J.B. 1917-2017)

Amnesia is this pocket serum sacrament 
blown in darts by dawn from the waking saints 

now this sunrise split as perforate tissue,
this elision spilling as on a burnt canvas. I’ve
had my nonconsensual experiences

A creeping Gilman yellow, slow as subatomic
parcels, chutes lateral in jeweled stars

to dust the tongues of snowblowers
in the stagnant oasis of your Fargo home.

Life goes on, yeah, until it doesn’t any longer

Antibodies spun in fool's gold hold to
sugar angels arches; her steady rocking

chair, a siren’s inverse call, Dickinson’s nightshade
hair ribbons; a body and its release in a mosque

of scalped neon, anonymity’s rented rooms.

Rocking chair flooded, shadow spindle
wood, locked sighs in paint’s drying point.

Downcast you pulled acoustic chlorine's
loose guns to no effect. Bodiless you wove

in the Red Letter sewn to a target, notes
of a glass violin always closer. I’ve had

my nonconsensual experiences.

Our Icarian forceps leak away as diurnal shadow

to a sick purr, with flypaper music
bars hold the grooves, white star bits falling

in webbed geometry. And here the sown ivy
of your earthbound bed, the pigeons trailing
as if to mourn, as though to say:

My absence you cannot argue with.