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.