Recursions
by Nolan Lee
I couldn’t cope with the stone in my brain
when Sir left. Things vomited words
like pills from a pink gullet.
Water swimming by like a fish.
Sound’s sound.
Visions of my dog having caught his own tail
turning red turning
into a snake, turning.
I could not see red but the color of red,
not myself but the one acting as myself, etc.
Hereness, thereness, sameness:
The mannequin in the department store’s Men’s section,
a good clean knife,
crossing out your annotations on Pygmalion.
Here there Sir
you’d written nonsense dictionaries
filled them with invectives segueing to non-sequiturs
made me understand them.
You’d said
a stone is made for throwing.
You’d see the lean dogs hung on their own bones and tell me
throw the stone.
I didn’t question yourself.
Flew as cruel as its own silence.
You’d said
stop staring at your eyelids.
The bird was leaving with a stone in its beak.
I say
to Sylvie, your brag couldn’t last thirty years: “I
am, I am, I am,” but
Morning alone is just a dish of ash.
I’ve seen the sun careen and crash
like a man without children.
It is okay, I say. I
am my own child.