I Wanted the Aspen Trees to be Audible

There must be a better way
to say this knife is dull.

Better men have done it:
gasped and backed away slowly

like nothing in this room would survive
that kind of dent.

Here, we make that kind of dent.

Here I am a horizontal edge
in the morning

I don't know the business of lunging
in a primary sense

But I know what it is
to vacate a room

To stand inside the weather

and circle beneath
all these miniature thoughts

I leave the poem

unbuttoned for days
and it dies.

Plain statements are made
about death

How we don't laugh enough
at our culinary errors

In the middle of the ceremony,
I ask what is

an elemental condition
Someone hands me an eyelash

Your laughter
announces the entrance
of a leaf

Miracle for the other Alexis

What if I begin
with what is never here:

a way to fit the glacier
inside the body

a body to hold the body
inside the coat.

Entering is always
breaking something

with a water-logged surface, something living
inside the arm

I have removed my hand
from the poet's hand,

rearranged my facial tendons
and therefore placed myself inside the house.

Poised beside scalloped curtains
I think hello

from the other side of this envelope
what is the color of the Alaskan ocean

I miss knowing you are here.

Breathing is not the specialty
of the dead

speaking in the language
of muscles and drums

I am here, I say,

I am not
but I say I am here,

asking what is the color
of the original question

You remove a finger
to reveal a softer,

much wilder blue.

Maria Walker / Know You Hello You