from the fold

Cass Eddington

self-scrying

tepid water prevents exit

and pleasure, tonight on the phone

the neighbor laughs through the wall

I’m in the tub a rare mirroring

of our bodies

in this structure made for efficiency

I kink my neck

like a live wire

there’s a breeze on my knees

in repose

I attempt the host, a conduit searching

for a signal to issue from

crumbling grout and sallow

form, my place to plug into

as visions weren’t

my purview, I do

in the tub what Joseph did in his hat

it takes great effort

to translate the body

into something less authoritative

something less secret, I attempt

enthusiasm, divine

possession, unadorned

you will not laugh when I have removed so much

to be understood

— the boys’ tussle with the pigskin

marks the ritual, in the late fall dusk

their breath made visible, the girls

preparing the site

I sample so many substances

over the course of so many hours

one sensation bleeding into another

hard to tell beginning from end

in this Pythian potluck, we speak intelligibly

of the furnace buckling

from the cold,

of the structure void of care

slumlord

what seems only heard until it is said

it sounds like the flaming aura of volition

the seraphim kept warm in circulation

of our own holy rage it seems

it’s how I know I’m alive –

a soviet blanket I buy online

under the covers, our knees, soft protrusions

afflict the comfortable, COMFORT the AFFLICTED

I make it my background, a talisman

until it disappears

the curves

I dress to disguise, keep moving

get going or lost – and what

would happen if I became

the eye of the goddamn beholder

would I defend it or pluck out mine own

it doesn’t even hurt

the self-enucleating martyrs claimed

with such fervor, who is the prayer for?

annually anointed with the oily sheen

of back-to-school specials

and blessings

if this is just one of many

possible worlds

I don’t want another object

lesson, if I gave you what I believe

your attention is worth

I’d have to put it on layaway

every day we give our lives getting

into the lowest kingdom

self-scrying

from the edge of the counter a melody, my phone

fills the silence in the lyrics I mishear

someone’s mother say enjoy your mind

as our mothers couldn’t, their thoughts cleaving

themselves where the seams won’t match-up

– do you understand I am just the sound

of that tear flapping in the wind

its ragged pulp in the elements

with sunflowers for witness?

I learn the syntax we’re couched in.

lisping, our names sound wrong when repeated

but there was no error in our tongues

rooting in the gaps for the sibyl in sibilant

the syllables in voluble

self-scrying

every day I take myself out

for a walk, my body, my pet

a gossamer new leaf

light strains through

between green matter and shadow

under the catalpa, her exclamation

sets my eyes to their blossoms: open

gently flaring trumpets they are

perfect the seed catalogue insists

snowy clusters midsummer before

or after the protest we spill out

they take their time blooming

and growing effete, I read

before opening enough

to invite the wandering bee

in – white ruffles

yellow painted ridges

a purple spray along the throat

I am made to understand

they have made themselves

desirable

who wrote this? how often

do they get paid? can they

take a bath? do they know

how to please their lovers?

have their arches fallen? I come

more easily when I ask you to

meet me on the page through screen-

shots and photos, our hearts annotate the margins

within an indexicality that can’t translate encounter

we try anyway –

now you pipe catalpa! now I am pointing

off the page, our shadows bob and tilt in unison

self-scrying

today fewer words, but repeated with intention

I try to create a loop of recognition

between me and this dog I call mine

all lungs and fur, my thoughts

wander, her harness growing tighter

we walk at an irregular hour

me a little stoned, her a little smaller

than when I first found her confused

and affable so greeting everyone

we meet strategically

searching only sometimes

reaching the thawing

goose scat – not quite

a steady pace lagging or four steps ahead

of me, she knows my body

now hesitates when I stop

girl, I tune out too—

when the frequency’s not right

most of the time just fuzz

the ghost of a sound

through the grave of another

lesser-listened station, searching

for the center of a crystal receiver

an algorithm designed for the dimensions of

your heartbreak, love songs

ache most that don’t reflect

our expression.

I turn the dial in my car but can’t find a song

that satisfies, can’t find my station, never sure

if I was hearing the holy ghost or

my own beating heart pulling me away

toward vitality

I didn’t climb the tree to fall and yet I did

the astrologer says I want to be a bad child

but I was better taught to be a good mother

she holds her nose high in the wind

my Aeolean harp, how you terrify

me with your need and balking deference

we’re a similar breed, going all in

for the chase, can you keep up –

she keeps running

long after the others stop

trailing her, eyes open wide enough

to let out a small demon

here in the ninth month of relative isolation

I was beginning to hear the shape

of the neighbors’ home through mine

not the sea but your own blood

rushing through its veins – you are living

it’s true, they use their kitchen doorway

to extend their game too

self-scrying

one of my lovers calls me before I call him

sick with the virus, he tells me

of dreams so vivid I forget mine

white, cataclysmic Western dramas

originating in the evangelical foothills

on the other side of the mountain

from the shadow it cast on me

I can’t listen for what I can’t separate

from myself, groomed as he once was

a woman, to speak in tongues, I strain

to hear the expectation buried deep

in clay soil before we were born

somehow it took – and ever since

I’ve been running on empty

dreams of rural ecstasy

sweat curls, ours or the animals’

another sacred grove to receive a vision

new bites to scratch, another congregation

to sacrifice yourself to, there being so many ways

to worship, every day we wake

to do it all over again – I leave

to walk my dog, threading the leash

around my fist, I had never known love

this shape, the pull and release, her face

now beginning to turn toward mine

when the tension’s too great, what’s better

in a pack, what’s better in a sleeve

my arm in shorthand heralding a new pedigree.