for Dana Levin
There are so many now, planked over the hallways, owning and closing
their walls like months. The courtyard kite
is failing, and still many argue, ankleshaped on the torn blanket, the sudden
punts, raining around
the clapping patient, settling in ditches against paper fronts.
We’ve been missing this,
you’ve been wrapping their clean guts, you’ve teased none. How the banging
keeps grip
at the bed. Now they curl lispily, a ripe foam worshipping someone’s burned toes,
listing and paddling,
the patience of their wash laughing at so many porn-colored cubicles you can foist
it, that bad well,
onto lovely arms, expunging surgery-sweat,
scattering empty lawn chairs
to the freezing brace of the sea of bed. They are hatching from scratched tops,
planted on the riding mowers you hear once in a while in the dark,
pressing and pausing with new names for dust and rib—you can harm it,
the liquid whip,
the dance of waiting, as they rap and jip
and lose without any regret,
a blush swaddling the head, burying fists into every person in every place.