January 19, 2015
Poem: From “Ideal Machine”
here is where I take you behind the eyes
a glistening star
here is where I take you
bone-thing I made
a gift pull it out
star in me salt bright and still
listen
how the cut is made
across my face could move any feeling
sear of the interior
here is the site I’ve dog-eared for you
taut as any waiting
my sudden fold of luck
pinched lightning
we can’t put our hands on but you do
my brain arriving through the darkness
like streets mapping out
this mine this mine this mine
+
in future rites I lay down
on the operating table
glassy and overdue
the surgeons take roll in choirs
hands like night swimmers
badwater below the sea
under lightest implication
the body breaks through
under lightest implication
the crocus push
through peat as a gesture for belief
hourglass and tulle
meadow sharpened to blade
on the last day the light
so easy to breathe
hustle star
weaving the darkness around
a little let on the line and
faces go under
+
a long way
dear optic nerve
you flatten like copper tilled wide
against the tracks
I want to show you how light scatters
my daughter’s bedroom her face
into unknowing
dear optic nerve dear crushed penny
in the dark I watch explosions
axons firing like mortars
I count them
low-hanging fireworks
gristle and verve
I press my face to the glass
+
dear ophthalmologist
your hands wag the story I cleave to
on either side of my face
wave fingers ask me to count them
dear ophthalmologist
I am not very good at telling stories
how your hands muscle the black
pin-pricks in the paper
how the dark whistles around them
day a dumb animal
limping through the grass
+
from the observation wing we can see it
gathering size
slow and sensate
I enter the machine like a lover’s black silk
my astronomer
flicking on all the lights
meat of the mind
he points to where the shine
breaks open from seed
hustle star
star in me
the bone there anatomical then moth
then
Lepidoptera
O don’t we all saunter in innocently enough
like love an uppercase L love
stamen eye you metastasize
my sea glass my meteor
Observed
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By Ashley Toliver
Ashley Toliver is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at Brown. She splits her time between Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon.
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