Hildred Crill
I was a hedged bet, just one
of the holes a rat found
and possessed, a last gulp
from the welling cup
a customer of memories
who consumed them.
I scraped the slates clean,
was the plan to encroach—
the lake would be a basin
of never ending dirt.
I opened and closed
the faucet like my own hand.
On the Photograph
They feed us silver and expose
our crossed forearms to every sun
in a day. Our latent meal
is surface, our skin
the tip of crystals, hectic life
among electrons, traveling
multitudes in a grain
—what we don’t feel
is moving memory
toward the glance.
They roll and beat gold leaf
—all we can afford,
a garnish on the outside we taste,
is not enough to poison us
but simply value hammered
thin. Gold the color? Property
of surface, says Wittgenstein.
All that glitters won’t sink in,
all the shine won’t scrub
a bone’s interior wall.
