Читать книгу The Wish Book - Alex Lemon - Страница 12

I Knew You Before You Were

Rusty chains coiled in the cardboard box

I carry to the dumpster & all I am

Thinking is my face falling off & is yours

Under it & or is someone’s I don’t

Even know—further down, a stranger,

A dead man, a saint, or just a sprawl

Of gravel & then I’m thinking this other thing—

There’s a snake in this box, blacktailed

& then more: there’s a bottomless immensity

Beneath my feet & what a sacrifice

It is each day just to get by, this alchemy,

This fevered life: illness & love,

Lockjaw & slow-motion kidnappings—it is what

It always is—chronic dying, shivering with

Unbelievable joy & not knowing a damn thing

About anything as lightning

Jigsaws the horizon. At the garbage pile, I pause—

Take a deep breath & sit on the curb.

Like they’re being sucked into the sky,

The trees’ limbs lift. No cars on

The street—so quiet. So hushed I can

Hardly breathe. Thousands of lives

Are piled into all this dirt we walk

On & I’m waiting, saving it all for you.