i will be a prophet.
a PROPHET.
visions.
trances.
cherubim.
like
those men in italy who
steer boats with sticks,
and the tourists who
float. glass beads.
sometimes, i look at my wife and say, 'darling, speak to me of love!' she stammers, as though she were surprised.
a prophet.
like bakers who breathe and and spices with their eyes closed, like the deaf who feel cellos in their chests and sway, like knife throwers. i dreamed last night, sitting in the german pews, that my skull was full of tiny machines. they look like the type that spear needles through fabric, but they were x-ray machines. they pricked the backs of my eyes and i stared straight ahead, holding very still. they were fragile, like a fox embryo's spine pressed up inside my eyebrows. images whirred, film clicks; they can see through my bones to the scrapings and velvet breeze left behind. they can see through my bones, they can see themselves:
a tiny, curled, fern-of-a-fox.
a miniature seashell fossil fox.
a paper-curl fox.
a skeleton fox, its bones painted gold.
a skeleton in a skull drained dry,
the x-rays reading bones beneath bones.
